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OUR ATTITUDE 
TOWARDS ENGLISH ROMAN CATHOLICS 
AND Tih EAP Ae COURT: 


THE CHURCH’S OUTLOOK FOR THE 
TWENTIETH CENTURY. 


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THEOLOGY, OLD AND NEW. 


REV. F. W. COBB, Dabs 
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This Work is the First Volume of the New Series of 
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THE CHURCH’S OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH 
CENTURY. 


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ELLIOT STOCK, 62, Paternoster Row, London, E.c. 


OUR ATTITUDE 
\\ 


TOWARDS 


ENGLISH ROMAN CATHOLICS, AND 
THE PAPAL COURT. 


BY 


ARTHUR GALTON, M.A., 


NEw COLLEGE, OXFORD, 


Domestic Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Ripon, 
and sometime Curate of Windermere. 


CHEAP EDITION. 


LONDON : 
CALVINISTIC PROTESTANT UNION, 
74, STRAND, W.C.; 
AND 
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PaTERNosTER Row, E.C. 


1902. 


Le 4 fi _ 
; # 
rf 
- _ 
' 


in 2022 with funding from — 
Duke University Libraries © 


https://archive.org/details/ourattitudetor 


Loe SS 


aA7T4,.2 
GIEIO 


TO 


PDWAKD “PECHE STOCK. 
RECTOR OF WINDERMERE 3; 
BY 
WHOSE WORDS AND LIFE 
THE GENTLE AND GRAVE TRADITIONS 
OF OUR FATHERS IN DIVINITY 

ARE STILL CONTINUED AMONG US; 

FROM 
THE AUTHOR: 


WITH GRATITUDE, AND GREAT AFFECTION. 


PREFACE. 


HE following pages give, so far as it is possible 

in the space allowed, an account of the relations 
between England and the Papacy, from the seventh 
century until our own time. The purpose of this 
volume is to show what the attitude of a patriotic 
Englishman should be towards his Roman Catholic 
fellow citizens, and the rulers of their Church. He can- 
not form a just or sound opinion in this matter without 
some knowledge of the past. I have tried to give him 
that knowledge concisely and clearly. I have tried, still 
more, to give it fairly. It has been my endeavour to 
record facts, and to let them speak for themselves. 
The result, it must be owned, is not favourable to the 
origin, the development, the principles, the methods, or 
the consequences of the papal system and authority; but, 
if any one is to be condemned for that result, it must 
be the makers of the history recorded, and not the 
historian who has merely presented the evidence, as 
he finds it, to the best of his knowledge and ability. 
Definite opinions are not necessarily prejudiced. 
Opinions may be strong without bias, if the facts 
upon which they rest will support the deductions that 


Vill Preface. 


are made from them. I bear witness gladly to the 
amount of active and practical good which is always 
being done, in abundant measure, by adherents of the 
papal Church in England. Some of the best people 
I have ever known belong to that Church. Many of 
my dearest friends are Roman Catholics. These facts 
and opinions, however, do not prevent me from thinking 
that my friends hold a theology which has no valid 
basis in Scripture or in history: nor do the personal 
excellences of Roman Catholics, both as Christians and 
as English citizens, blind me to the political, social, and 
intellectual dangers, as I regard them, of the papal 
hierarchy and organization. 

So, too, in the past, I distinguish clearly between 
English Romanists and their ecclesiastical superiors 
in Italy. The latter, as I think, have been persis- 
tent and dangerous enemies to England, as well as 
treacherous and cruel advisers to their own subjects. 
The former have an heroic and a loyal record, of 
which every Englishman may be proud, and for which 
all of us are the better. I regard that distinction as 
the key-note of my volume. It has always been present 
to me as I wrote. I wish to bring it clearly before 
my readers from the beginning. I have written, too, 
only as a student of our political and constitutional 
history. My volume is not meant to be a theological 
treatise. I have avoided, so far as it was possible, all 
reference to merely theological and sectarian disputes. 
My one object has been to examine the various relations 
between England and the Papacy, and to exhibit the 


Preface. 1X 


attitude of the Papacy towards the natural growth of our 
principles and institutions. 

I may add, that I speak with the experience of one 
who has known English Romanism from within ; who 
accepted the papal claims in his youth, but who was 
compelled to reject them by fuller and more accurate 
information. My experience of English Romanists leads 
me to those same conclusions which I have gathered 
from historical investigation. I admire and honour indi- 
vidual English Romanists: I abhor that foreign and 
mundane organization which, as I think, deceives them 
by religious pretexts and professions. 

My special gratitude is due to one who appears to 
think very much as I do about history, but who finds 
himself able to remain in a theological position which I 
was forced by honour and honesty to repudiate. My 
reference is to Father Taunton, whose admirable 
“History of the Jesuits in England” I have used so 
frequently and freely. He has collected a vast mass of 
scattered materials, with immense industry: he has used 
them, as I think, with consummate skill, and with an 
even more commendable accuracy and fairness. His 
work is a much needed contribution to English history, 
and should win him a conspicuous place among our 
leading historians. He has increased my gratitude to 
himself, since this volume went through the press, by 
his excellent biography of Wolsey. Seeing that he 
writes professedly as an Anglo-Roman ecclesiastic, I 
must draw attention to the significance and value of his 
conclusions. If my own position, action, and opinions 


x Preface. 


be challenged, as unduly personal or prejudiced, I may 
point to the conclusions of a learned and impartial 
Roman ecclesiastic ; which, with regard to many of the 
most important events and personages mentioned in 
this volume, are similar to those I now lay before 
my readers. 


The Palace, Ripon ; 
Christmas, Igor. 


CHAPTER 


1G 
MO 


VII. 


CONTENTS: 


PREFACE vies 

INTRODUCTORY 

THE PATRIARCHATES 

THE ROMAN PATRIARCH 

BRITISH AND ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY... 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE PAPAL 
LEGEND 


THe NORMAN AND PapaL CONQUEST 
OF ENGLAND 


THE NEw LEARNING AND THE ENGLISH 
REFORMATION 


THE DISENDOWMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS 
ORDERS 


THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH... 
Henry VIII. 


THE COUNCIL OF TRENT AND THE 
NEw ROMANISM 


ELIZABETH’S BATTLE AGAINST THE 
PAPACY 


30 
43 
50 


55 
60 


64 


74 


Xil 


Contents. 


CHAPTER 


XIII. 


XIV. 


XV. 


XVI. 


XVII. 


XVIII. 


THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION... 


THE SoclrETy OF FRIENDS, AND THE 
SUPPRESSION OF THE JESUITS 


THE REVIVAL OF THE PAPACY, AND THE 
INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE 


‘THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MODERN PAPACY 
UNCHANGED ... a ie pot 


THE EFFECTS AND FUTURE OF THE 
PAPACY vo um oa 


THE PRESENT POSITION OF ROMAN 
CATHOLICS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE 


PAGE 
104 


117 


125 


CHAPTER: I. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


E have to consider in this volume the 
relations which ought to prevail now 
between educated Englishmen, who do not 
recognise the Pope’s authority, and English- 
men who do. Besides this, we have to explain 
the attitude which patriotic Englishmen, who 
know the history of our country, who under- 
stand and value our institutions, must adopt 
towards the methods, aims, and spirit of the 
Roman Court; for the distinction between 
Roman Catholics and the papal Curia should 
never be forgotten. To put the case in another 
way, what should be the attitude of unpreju- 
diced and Christian Englishmen, who are not 
Romanists, towards their Roman Catholic fellow 
subjects, as well as towards that political and 
centralized organization which claims the obe- 
dience of all Romanists in the name of their 
belief? 

The answers to these questions are the sub- 
ject of the present volume; and _ satisfying 
answers to them can only be given by an 
unbiassed examination of the past. We must 
see what the various relations between England 
and the Papacy have been, since they came first 
into contact with one another. We must show 
what effects the Papacy had upon our Church 


I 


2 England and the Papacy. 


and nation, when its authority among us was 
greatest. We must examine and explain the 
causes which produced the gradual changes in 
our relationship to the Court of Rome, leading 
up to the subjection of our monarchy and 
almost of our nation, but ending finally in a 
complete official severance of all connexion, 
both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs. Then 
we must expose the consequences of that sever- 
ance, and the attitude assumed by Rome in 
its efforts to regain the abused and forfeited 
supremacy. We must also consider the neces- 
sity of self-protection which was forced upon 
our own Government by the warlike diplomacy 
and acts of the papal Curia. 

When we have sifted and pondered all the 
elements in a very long and complex problem, 
we shall be more likely to form a juster esti- 
mate of what our attitude to the Roman system 
should be at present; and, though we cannot 
unroll the future in detail, we may at least 
acquire from examining the past some general 
principles for our guidance as we look forward 
into the unknown. 


CL APaLE Rede 


THE PATRIARCHATES. 


O understand the Papacy, we must examine 

the various organizations and polities of 

that which usurps the name of historical Chris- 
tianity, as they have risen, and developed, and 
declined, and fallen, in successive ages, under 
the influence of different modes of thought and 
of environment. The primary documents in 
that enquiry are, of course, the books of the 
New Testament; but they serve to show more 
generally how far organized Christianity has 
wandered from its primitive and simpler stan- 
dards, rather than to justify the various organi- 
zations and polities by which Christianity has 
been tainted and encumbered. These books 
appear to tell us that ‘‘the Church of Christ 
received from the Divine Founder no rigid and 
detailed constitution. Neither the faith, nor the 
government, nor the discipline of the Christian 
society were (szc) defined in advance.”* In 
other words, the Founder of Christianity and 
his immediate followers confined themselves 
to broad statements of principle. They seem 
to have left us an almost boundless free- 
dom of application and of detail. A living 
faith was put into a world of living men, and 


* Canon Henson: ‘‘Apostolic Christianity.” 
[2 


4 England and the Papacy. 


they were intended to ape it to their various 
and changing needs. 

When we pass from the books of the New 
Testament to the writings of the sub-Apostolic 
and of the following ages, we are on very 
different ground, and in a still more dubious 
atmosphere. Between the New Testament and 
the earliest Church histories there yawns a 
great gulf, which we cannot either illuminate 
or bridge. We can only traverse it as through 
a tunnel, in the dark. The clerical historians 
are far from satisfactory. There are many 
statements in them which do not seem to be 
borne out by facts that we meet with elsewhere. 
Theological disputes, the acts of martyrs, the 
persecutions, the alleged triumph of ecclesiasti- 
cal Christianity, the sudden collapse of official 
paganism, and the miraculous conversion of 
the Imperial Government, are all matters which 
we cannot accept from the ecclesiastical records 
without a great deal of hesitation and reserve. 
We are obliged to admit the existing accounts 
as a working hypothesis, simply because we 
have no others; but we should not build our 
religion upon these foundations of sand, or the 
whole of our structure may fall to ruin before 
the winds and floods of critical and scientific 
history. Christian thought and institutions are 
to be connected with the New Testament by 
records and studies which are very different 
from those supplied to us by the ecclesiastical 
historians. 

We may, however, put all these deeper 
questions on one side. We are not concerned 
here with the origins of Christianity, but only 
with the current ecclesiastical accounts of it. 
Our present enquiry, therefore, may begin at 


England and the Papacy. 5 


the period of the great councils and the Nicene 
Creed, in the fourth century. At that time, 
the highest ecclesiastical government of the 
Church had become vested in four or five 
Patriarchs: of Jerusalem, of Antioch, of Rome, 
of Alexandria, of Constantinople; though the 
word Patriarch does not seem to have acquired 
a fixed and technical meaning until much later. 
These five ecclesiastics were all equal in rank, 
and they had co-ordinate powers. Each of 
them, within his own district and in his own 
affairs, was independent of all the others; and 
his authority within those limits was narrowed 
still more by the canonical freedom and Jjuris- 
diction of every bishop, as well as by those 
rights of popular election and of congregational 
action which still existed. 

The ecclesiastical organization of the Church 
may be described, loosely, as a confederation 
of almost independent Patriarchates. The only 
authorities to which they all submitted were 
the supremacy of the Emperor, and the unani- 
mous decisions of the whole Church in council. 
As Rome had been the cradle and metropolis 
of the Empire, the bishop of Rome naturally 
took precedence of the other Patriarchs; but 
he had no authority over any of them, nor 
over any of their people and concerns. All 
persons, clerical and secular, acknowledged the 
legislative and executive supremacy of the 
Emperor, both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs. 
The civil power was held, in the Apostolic 
phrase, to be ‘‘ordained of God,” and there- 
fore to be spiritual, to have a religious juris- 
diction. 

Neither in the ecclesiastical nor in the civil 
sphere, during the first ages of the alliance 


6 England and the Papacy. 


between Church and State, was there any 
notion of those claims which were made after- 
wards, and are made still, by the Roman 
bishops. The terms ‘‘ecclesiastical” and 
‘spiritual’ had not then been confused, to 
the great damage of the Church, and in defiance 
of New Testament Christianity. 


CHAPTER 0. 


THE ROMAN PATRIARCH. 


HE next stage in ecclesiastical affairs was 
brought about by the decay of the Roman 
power in the West, through the invasion and 
victories of the Barbarians, and by the Maho- 
metan conquests in the East. By the latter, 
Grecian Christianity was almost blotted out. 
It persisted only in a diminishing area round 
Constantinople, until that place was conquered 
by the Turks in 1453; but the Churches and 
Patriarchs of Jerusalem, of Antioch, of Alex- 
andria, disappeared. Through ecclesiastical 
rivalry and political necessities, the Patriarchs 
of Rome and Constantinople were more and 
more estranged from one another, and finally 
all communication between them was broken 
off. The old Patriarchal confederation was 
thus destroyed ; and, in place of it, we find the 
remnants of the Church divided sharply into 
East and West, each part regarding the other 
as heretical and hardly Christian. 

We must now, unfortunately, put aside the 
whole Greek Church from our consideration. 
The Greek language; the original New Testa- 
ment; the Greek Fathers, with their broad and 
philosophical notions of Scripture and _ theo- 
logy ; the old worship and constitution of the 
Church ; above all, the flexibility and fecundity 


8 England and the Papacy. 


of the Greek spirit, were banished out of 
western Europe for more than a thousand years. 
Indeed, they have not yet come back into wes- 
tern Christianity, whether papal or reformed ; 
nor can they return until clergy and laity both 
escape from the hard and narrow bondage of 
Augustine. 

At the beginning of the middle ages, all true 
knowledge of Christian thought and literature 
and antiquity was blurred. The remembrance 
of the old Patriarchal constitution was forgotten. 
The cruel and crafty legal spirit of pagan 
Rome, hardened and narrowed still more by 
the Augustinian theology, was left face to face 
with the ignorance and ferocity of the Barbarian 
masters of the Empire. Out of these unspiri- 
tual and unenlightened elements medizval eccle- 
siasticism was evolved. On these worldly foun- 
dations the medizval Papacy was built. Italy 
and all the western provinces fell into confusion. 
They were a prey to ignorance and violence. 
The only survival of the ancient order and civili- 
zation who remained was the Roman bishop, 
and he soon began to undertake civil responsi- 
bilities, though always in dependence on the 
Emperor or on his nominal representatives. 

That, which began as a duty, soon became 
a pleasure and a source of profit, then an object 
of ambition, of intrigue, or of battle, and at 
last a divine right. The bishops of Rome 
were gradually immersed in temporal concerns, 
and soiled by the cares of government. They 
had no time for theology; and, for nine hundred 
years, ‘‘not a single work of any importance” 
was composed in Rome.* Twenty-four papal 


* Dollinger: ‘‘ Chapters of European History.” 


England and the Papacy. 9 


wars may be enumerated in the earlier middle 
ages, and the Papacy was bought oftener than 
it was battled for. The old severity of penance 
was commuted into money payments; and, by 
the ninth century, the whole system of papal 
administration had assumed that financial char- 
acter to which it has always clung. 

Nevertheless, much good was done by the 
bishops of Rome in the early middle ages, and 
especially by Gregory the First, the best of the 
whole succession. In him, the bishop was not 
forgotten in the magistrate. He made no claim 
to sovereign power or to papal prerogatives 
and attributes, as they were developed later. 
Indeed, he repudiated the title of ‘‘ Universal 
Patriarch,” and rebuked his rival at Constanti- 
nople for aiming at it. He was a pastor, and 
not a diplomatist. His desire was not for tem- 
poral power or for ecclesiastical supremacy, but 
for souls and missions. The modern world 
owes much to him; and we in England are, 
in a special way, his debtors. 

To no single body of men does modern 
Europe owe so much as to Gregory’s mis- 
sioners, the Benedictines. They were the great 
civilizers and teachers of those dark and violent 
_ages, when modern society was being schooled. 
Through the good work of the Benedictines, 
but also through the prevailing ignorance and 
darkness, the Latin Patriarchs, by causes which 
were not solely ecclesiastical, obtained a growing 
influence over the young nations and Churches 
of the West. It was that influence which even 
a low civilization must obtain over a lower, the 
rudest law over an absence of any law, a mother 
Church over her missionary colonies. By these 
means, and through these causes, the Latin 


10 England and the Papacy. 


Patriarchs were able to lay the foundations of the 
medizval Papacy. The ecclesiastical courtesies 
of these ages became the customs of the next ; 
these customs, in their turn, grew into pious 
and necessary laws, and then were enforced as 
rights or divine prerogatives of the Apostolic 
See. 


CHAPTER: EV. 


BRITISH AND ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY. 


E may now turn to the affairs of our 

own country. We do not know how 

or when Christianity was brought here. The 
Celtic tribes, however, possessed a form of it 
which had come to them at some immemorial 
time, in some unrecorded way. In Ireland 
and in Brittany, the Celtic Churches seem to 
have been organized on a tribal or a clannish 
basis. The monastery, and not the diocese, 
appears to have been the instrument of organi- 
zation: the abbot, and not the bishop, was the 
spring of energy and growth. ‘‘ There were 
no bishops,” M. Renan declares, among the 
refugees from Britain, who fled into Armorica 
before the Scandinavian invaders: ‘‘the autho- 
rity of Rome, and the religious institutions 
which prevailed in the Latin world, were 
wholly unknown in these regions, which were 
isolated from the remainder of Christendom.”* 
In all these matters, we are in a region of 
uncertainty and of conjecture. There were, 
however, significant and suggestive differences 
of organization and of practice, if not of belief, 
between the Christianity of the more indepen- 
dent Celts, and the Christianity of Romanized 


* Renan: ‘‘ Souvenirs d’Enfance.” 


12 England and the Papacy. 


Gaul and of the less Romanized Britain. The 
current theory, that bishops were kept on the 
abbots’ premises, in a dependent state, merely to 
convey Orders, is too ridiculous and incredible 
an explanation to be taken seriously. It could 
only have been devised after the later medizval 
theories of the Papacy, of Episcopacy, and of 
Orders had become generally established. Celtic 
Christianity, or at any rate the Celtic Church, 
so far as eastern and southern Britain are con- 
cerned, was utterly destroyed by the Scandi- 
navian invaders and conquerors of the fifth 
century. So complete was the destruction, or so 
slight was the Christianity of Britain, that hardly 
a single archeological fragment belonging to the 
period of Roman occupation, and beyond all 
doubt of Christian origin, has yet been dis- 
covered in England. 

On all sides, the question of primitive Chris- 
tianity in Britain is enveloped in mysteries ; and 
the only records left are documents whose paren- 
tage and treatment are liable to grave suspicion. 
The passing of Druidism into Christianity is a 
suggestive and an interesting problem, which 
we have no present means of solving. 

From the old Celtic sources, however, Chris- 
tianity appears to have spread again, after the 
Frankish invasions, into Holland, and Ger- 
many, and Switzerland, and to have penetrated 
even to the Scandinavian homes of Thor and 
Odin. Irish and British missionaries were 
zealous and successful in these labours. The 
more Romanized Celts of Gaul kept their re- 
ligion, such as it was, and gave it to their 
conquerors, by whom it was changed materially 
in form and spirit. 

In Britain, the Scandinavians of the north- 


England and the Papacy. Te 


east and the settlers in Mercia were converted 
from Scotland. The West; that is, Cornwall, 
Wales, Cumbria, and Strathclyde; had re- 
mained nominally Christian, if we may believe 
the ecclesiastical historians. The conquerors 
of south-eastern England were gained over by 
missionaries from Gaul and Italy. These three 
elements or sources of Christianity; the old 
British or Welsh, the Irish or Scotch, the 
French and Italian; were a long while settling 
down into one organized and united Church. 

It is going much too far to say that England 
owes its Christianity and Church to Rome. It 
is defying history and law to say that the Eng- 
lish Church was from the beginning, or should 
be now, a dependency of Rome. The Italian 
preachers, who came to us under Augustine in 
597, were indeed sent by Gregory the First; but, 
as soon as Augustine had been made a bishop in 
Gaul, he and his suffragans became the consti- 
tutional heads of independent Churches, subject 
only to the prevailing canons and laws of 
Christendom. Those laws, in the seventh cen- 
tury, knew nothing of the papal organization, as 
it was developed in the feudal and later middle 
ages. They knew still less of modern papal 
attributes and claims. Even judged by the laws 
and customs of the seventh century, the Churches 
of the English Peoples were not subjected in 
any special way to the Roman bishop, merely 
because some of their dioceses were founded or 
restored by missionaries who had come from 
Italy. In our own days, many missionaries are 
sent out from England. As long as they are 
pioneers, they depend on the mother country. 
When they are successful and strong enough to: 
be organized into dioceses, they gain all the 


14 England and the Papacy. 


rights and freedom of their position. So it was, 
too, thirteen centuries ago. 

Ever since then, the Churches of the English 
Peoples have had an unbroken corporate and 
constitutional existence. The various elements 
of Scottish, British, and English Christianity 
came to a working agreement among themselves 
at the conference of Whitby, in 664; and, a few 
years later, under Archbishop Theodore, they 
were consolidated and organized into a single 
Church. During the four centuries between 668 
and the Norman Conquest in 1066, the English 
Church went on its own way, quietly, under- 
going little change, preserving its original 
character and habits. There was much per- 
sonal devotion to the relics and shrines of 
Rome; and this devotion was utilized to en- 
large the papal influence and revenues. Contri- 
butions and endowments for the use of English 
pilgrims, oblations and gifts made to the Roman 
sanctuaries, were diverted by the Romans, and 
were finally demanded by the Popes as a tribute, 
under the name of Peter’s Pence. The official 
and ecclesiastical connexion with Rome was 
much less than any modern Papist cares to 
realize, and was much more than some timid 
and superficial Anglicans venture to admit. 
The bishop of Rome claimed, and, so far as he 
could, exercised, by illegally extending, the con- 
stitutional powers of his Patriarchate. He 
called himself, improperly, the Patriarch of the 
West, or the Latin Patriarch ; although, in strict 
law, his patriarchal powers had not been granted 
to him over the whole of Italy. His patri- 
archal claims, like his papal claims afterwards, 
were really an unhistorical, an arbitrary, and a 
lawless usurpation. In the seventh century, 


England and the Papacy. 5 


however, the bishop of Rome had not trans- 
formed his Patriarchate out of all recognition, 
though he had extended his authority beyond 
its legal bounds. 

Papal powers and jurisdiction, in the modern, 
and even in the later medizval sense, were un- 
known in England during the four centuries we 
are considering. Thanks to our distance from 
Italy, and to our estranging sea, papal encroach- 
ments, both against the civil power and the free- 
dom of national churches, were developed in 
Gaul and Germany long before they obtained a 
footing here. The English Sovereigns before 
the Conquest exercised the Royal Supremacy, 
very much as the early Christian Emperors had, 
and as the term was understood again among 
ourselves in the sixteenth century. Even so late 
and timid a sovereign as Edward the Confessor 
did not hesitate to use the title, ‘‘ Vicar of the 
Most High King.” Bishops might be appointed 
without any reference to the Pope. Matters of 
discipline, re-arrangements of dioceses, liturgies 
and rubrics, appear to have been settled by 
councils of the English Church; saving always 
the Supremacy of the Crown, by which alone 
any ecclesiastical decisions acquired the force of 
law. The clergy were national in feeling, and 
had not yet become a privileged and sacerdotal 
caste. In spite of periodical agitations by inno- 
vators and so-called reformers, it would seem 
that the parochial clergy were generally married, 
as, too, in many cases, were canons and mem- 
bers of collegiate bodies. At any rate, marriage 
was open to all the clergy who had not taken 
monastic vows. We find the King, the nobles, 
and the bishops consulting and legislating about 
doctrine and discipline. Matters of worship, of 


16 England and the Papacy. 


discipline, of organization were entirely in the 
hands of the national authorities, subject only to 
the supreme authority of Scripture and the 
creeds. The interference or advice of Rome 
was sometimes asked; it was never admitted 
unasked, and it was ignored at least as often as 
it was accepted. There were no separate or 
special courts for ecclesiastical persons and 
affairs. The Bishop sat in the royal or provin- 
cial courts by the Sheriff and the Earl. The 
clergy, individually and collectively, were sub- 
ject to the laws and customs of the realm ; they 
were subjected without any privileges or reserva- 
tions to the King’s authority. The Kings 
themselves used the title of /perator, and some- 
times of Bao.Ae’s, to prove their complete indepen- 
dence of any and every foreign power; as well 
as to assert their lordship over out-lying and 
vassal states, and to mark their supremacy over 
all persons and causes within their imperial 
dominion. 

The point to seize and keep hold of is that the 
English Peoples were brought into the Catholic 
Church while the bishop of Rome was still a 
Patriarch, and was not yet a Pope in the later 
mediezval and feudal sense. Our polity in 
Church and State, before the Norman Con- 
quest, was modelled according to those notions 
which had prevailed throughout western Chris- 
tendom in the sixth and seventh centuries. 
Between those ages and the eleventh century, 
the old Roman Patriarchate had developed into 
the medizval papacy, and was fast becoming 
a feudal organization, whose chiefs not only 
claimed temporal dominions and authority, but 
went on to challenge the supremacy of all. 
sovereigns and the integrity of the civil power. 


England and the Papacy. 17 


For the reasons indicated, England before the 
Conquest stood outside these developments. In 
the middle of the eleventh century, it was still 
living ecclesiastically in the notions and accord- 
ing to the Church order of the seventh. It had 
been affected very little by those ecclesiastical 
and social developments which were being 
evolved on the Continent, and which were 
transforming the whole fabric of society. These 
changes in political and social affairs no doubt 
were good, both in themselves and in their 
results. In ecclesiastical affairs, too, their in- 
tention was good, but their effects on the whole 
were corrupting and disastrous. Moreover, 
they prevailed everywhere in western Europe 
from the eleventh century until the sixteenth. 
They were then expelled out of some countries 
by a destructive and revolutionary process ; and 
they were re-imposed upon some churches 
through a more centralized, tyrannical, anti- 
national, and mischievous organization. Eng- 
land alone was able to resist both revolution and 
reaction, by a conservative, a constructive, and a 
constitutional procedure. Our Church was not 
swept away into ecclesiastical anarchy; our mon- 
archy was not allowed to become despotic. The 
Church was able to keep herself from anarchy 
and revolution without succumbing to the papal 
autocracy ; and, by the same constitutional and 
historic methods, the country was able to escape 
the nearer peril of a royal absolutism. The 
Church returned to the sounder and freer model 
of the seventh century; and, upon that secure 
foundation, we have constructed something 
better. Our English polity thus bears witness 
against the encroachments of the papacy in 
Church and State. This is the value and the 

2 


18 England and the Papacy. 


strength, historically and theologically, of our 
Anglican position. To maintain and to hand 
on this great inheritance of order and of liberty 
is the duty, the singular privilege, of our Church 
and Commonwealth. 

We have now to describe how the continuity 
and full exercise of our inheritance were invaded, 
imperilled, and for a time impeded, though 
never wholly abolished either in fact or theory. 


CEUAP ARE Raa. 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE PAPAL LEGEND. 


N theory, the Church is often compared to a 
rock, immovable and changeless in a fluc- 
tuating world. This comparison may be true of 
the broad principles of Christ’s religion. It is 
not true of those human organizations which 
have too often annexed or exploited Christianity, 
and been mistaken for it. In fact, the Church, 
as a theological and political organization, has 
always more resembled a chameleon than a rock, 
by invariably, successively, and slavishly reflect- 
ing its environments : 


“The thin chameleon, fed with air, receives 
The colour of the thing to which he cleaves.” 


Indeed, the Church has gone beyond the chame- 
leon in the past, and has taken not only the 
colours, but the forms of the various polities and 
institutions which have surrounded it. The 
patriarchal constitution of the Church, in the 
fourth century, reflects the Imperial administra- 
tion when Christianity entered officially into 
the fabric of the Empire. The patriarchs, the 
metropolitans, the archbishops, the provinces, . 
the dioceses, the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy 
and organization, were parallel to the civil and 
magisterial administration of the Emperors. In 
earlier ages, too, when the position, experiences, 


2S 


20 England and the Papacy. 


and opportunities of the Christians were more 
suited to their origin and social rank, as well as 
to their genuine spirit, the functions and titles of 
their ministry are all found in the Synagogues 
or in the charitable Clubs and Brotherhoods of 
the Greek and Roman working classes. So, 
too, again, when the Roman Empire and civili- 
zation gave way to the Barbarians, and society 
was re-constituted upon a military basis, we 
find the Church gradually assuming that feudal 
aspect and organization upon which the new 
governments and societies were modelled by the 
necessities of a rude and violent age. 

The spiritual power of the Papacy is founded, 
ultimately and solely, upon the words in the 
Gospel attributed to Matthew, ‘‘ Thou art Peter, 
and on this rock I will build my Church.” The 
connection between Peter and the Papacy, which 
is not obvious in the words themselves, is 
worked out thus. There is a tradition that Peter 
was crucified at Rome in the time of Nero. 
This tradition grew into the legend that he was 
bishop of Rome for twenty-five years, and that 
he handed on all his prerogatives, as ‘* Prince 
of the Apostles,” to his successors in the bishop- 
rick. This legend cannot be made to fit in with 
the meagre facts which are recorded, or with 
any practical scheme of dates. There were pro- 
bably no bishops, in the current meaning of the 
term, during the first century. Certainly there 
were no territorial bishops until much later. As 
to the words in ‘‘ Matthew,” not one of those 
early and grave authorities, whom we call the 
Fathers, interpreted that text in the modern 
papal sense ; and they are the only reliable wit- 
nesses for the belief of their own times. Not 
only with regard to this text, but in treating the 


England and the Papacy. 21 


whole range of Scripture, theology, and Church 
affairs, they are ignorant of the Roman claims 
and of the prerogatives of Peter. 

The famous passage in Irenzus, unless it be 
mis-translated, is against the theological claims 
of the Roman See, though it bears witness to 
the political supremacy of the Imperial Metro- 
polis. Irenaeus does not say, as the Papists 
urge, that all Churches must agree with Rome. 
He does say that every Church; that is, the 
Christians from the whole Roman world; must 
resort incessantly (comvenzre) to the capital: and 
by this concourse, or circulation from all sides, 
the apostolic faith and teaching may be tested at 
the centre. In other words, the prevailing and 
universal faith of Christendom, guod ubique quod 
ab oninibus, might then be tested most con- 
veniently and certainly in Rome, because all 
Churches corresponded with or resorted to the 
capital of the Empire. Rome was not to teach 
them, as in the papal theory. They were to 
keep Rome from everything contradictory and 
Strange. By reversing this process, the papal 
doctrines have become what they are; and Rome, 
instead of being corrected by the Churches, has 
corrupted and then dominated every Church in 
her communion. 

Augustine alone of the great Fathers ever 
applied the term ‘‘this rock,” as the foundation 
of the Church, to Peter; but he himself cor- 
rected what he judged to be an immature and 
a wrong conclusion, and he held finally that the 
“rock” was Christ. The papal theory and 
application of this text were unknown in the 
fourth century. Scripture, the Fathers, Church 
history, Church organization, are all against 
them and all exclude them. Even the con- 


22 England and the Papacy. 


tinuance and violence of controversy, and the 
difficulties in settling it, show that this means 
of settlement had not been thought of in that 
stormy period. 

To Peter obviously, according to the narrative 
in ‘‘Matthew,” belongs the advantage of first 
acknowledging the Messiahship of Christ. That 
personal primacy and privilege cannot be denied 
him, or given to another. His reward is the gift 
of the symbolical keys ; which, we must remem- 
ber, were given to all rabbis or teachers when 
they were qualified officially to teach. Peter 
was thus qualified and commissioned first to 
teach that belief which had been shown him. 
The same commission was given later to those 
who were qualified later; and so the process 
has continued through the centuries. The 
Messiahship of Christ, and all that may be 
involved in it, was the foundation of the Mes- 
sianic Society or Kingdom. This was the large 
and living rock, or Ilérpa, on which it was to 
stand secure, and by which it was to inherit the 
apocalyptic promises. Simon was the TIlezpos, 
or fragment of rock, a stone in the figurative 
building ; and, with regard to time and person, 
the first stone. The Greek words bear this 
interpretation, but they will not bear any inter- 
pretation which ignores the distinction between 
Ilérpa and Ilérpos, or which reverses the natural 
meaning of the phrase by making the more 
important word subordinate to the less. 

Besides, in the text, whatever may be said of 
Peter, nothing is said of any successors to him ; 
and, if anything that is written in this passage 
be applied to a succession of men, we must be 
critical in our methods and complete in our 
application. We must not pick and choose 


England and the Papacy. 23 


arbitrarily to suit a theory. We must apply the 
whole passage to Peter’s successors as well as 
to himself. We must not remember the 18th 
verse of ‘‘ Matthew’s” chapter, when we think 
of the Popes, and forget the 23rd, in which our 
Lord said also to Peter, ‘‘Get thee behind me, 
Satan: thou art an offence to me ; thou savourest 
not the things that be of God, but those that be 
of men.” If the former of ‘‘ Matthew’s”’ verses 
may be applied to the Papacy, then the other 
must; and this verse applies with destructive 
and stinging accuracy to a large number of the 
two hundred-and-fifty-seven Popes, as well as to 
the spirit, methods, and policy of the Roman 
Court throughout its history. 

The whole papal interpretation of this text is 
based on a tradition which is as unhistorical as 
the ‘‘ Donation of Constantine,” or the romance 
of the Three Kings of Cologne, or the voyage of 
Joseph of Arimathea to Glastonbury. It has 
no more weight in serious theology than any 
other medizval legend has in sober history. It 
is, however, the sole foundation of the papal 
system. All the arguments for and against the 
papal authority, for and against every innova- 
tion which depends on it, come back at last to 
this one text; which was misunderstood by the 
-medizval theologians, in their ignorance of 
Greek and of antiquity ; which has to be strained 
and manipulated by the Ultramontanes. 

The temporal power of the Popes, and their 
invasions of the Imperial supremacy, are based 
upon another fiction which could only have 
been made use of in a time of ignorance and 
credulity. By the ‘‘ Donation of Constantine,” 
as the legend calls it, that Emperor, when he 
was baptized in Rome, left his capital to the 


24 England and the Papacy. 


Popes and founded another at Constantinople. 
In most legends there is a kernel of truth, and 
there is in this. Constantine did found a new 
capital, but not for the Popes’ convenience and 
advantage. He was not baptized until long 
after his mythical ‘‘conversion”; and, appar- 
ently, the Popes were ignorant of his bequest 
for more than three centuries. This fiction, 
however, enforced by many wars, by systematic 
and scandalous diplomacy, and fortified by some 
legacies of territory, which were probably all 
void in feudal law, is the sole origin of the 
Popes’ temporal power and of their sovereignty 
over the Papal States. 

The supremacy and importance of the old 
capital; the notion of Peter’s supremacy, of the 
prerogatives conveyed to him by the words in 
‘‘Matthew,” the legend of his bishoprick in 
Rome, and of the inheritance of his imaginary 
prerogatives by succeeding bishops; the ro- 
mance of ‘‘Constantine’s Donation”; the real 
possession of delegated civil power, the gradual 
acquisition of territorial possessions and of inde- 
pendence; the separation from Constantinople, 
the disappearance of the other Patriarchs, and 
the isolated importance of the bishops of Rome ; 
all these elements combined in evolving the 
medizval Papacy out of the old Roman Patri- 
archate. The notion of Peter’s prerogatives, 
and of the Roman bishops being his heirs, took 
a theoretical and recorded shape under Leo I. 
(440-461). The Leonine school manipulated and 
extended these visionary claims. It was a long 
while, however, before they became effective and 
practical. Gregory I. (590-604) repudiated the 
notion of an universal patriarch, saying, truly, 
that it would destroy the episcopate. Leo III. 


England and the Papacy. 25 


(795-816) acknowledged the supremacy of his 
master and sovereign, the Emperor Charle- 
magne. 

Nicholas I. (858-867) may perhaps be con- 
sidered as the founder of the medizval Papacy ; 
and the Popes were able to extend their influ- 
ence during the century and a quarter of weak- 
ness and confusion which prevailed between 
Charles the Great and Otho the First. During 
those long ages of darkness and of civil discord, 
the bishops of Rome were enabled, through the 
Petrine or papal fictions, to rebel against their 
sovereigns the Emperors, to annex parts of their 
territory, to challenge their sovereignty and the 
independence of the civil power, and finally to 
usurp the old Imperial supremacy in ecclesias- 
tical affairs. Fortified by their new temporal 
position, and still extending their papal claims, 
they went on to diminish the freedom of other 
bishops, to annex many of their old preroga- 
tives, and to threaten the independence of all 
the national Churches. 

Although the Popes no longer had any rival 
Patriarchs, their former peers, to check their 
ambitions and innovations, there was still some 
remembrance of liberty and of ancient law 
among the national Churches, ignorant as they 
had become of antiquity and of the older consti- 
tution. To bear down this opposition, other 
fictions were devised ; and a series of forgeries, 
though manufactured for a very different pur- 
pose, was adopted and used for the advantage 
of the Papacy. Archives were discovered in 
Rome, as they were needed, asserting the new 
papal authority against all the former laws and 
customs of the Churches. Canons and Acts of 
early Councils were forged or tampered with for 


26 England and the Papacy. 


the same purpose, and by the same unscrupulous 
methods. Letters of early Popes were fabricated 
to bear out these spurious laws and canons. 
Passages of the Fathers were invented, and 
interpolated into their authentic writings. In 
other cases, by manipulations of the text, and 
by still bolder omissions, passages which were 
wholly opposed to the papal claims and innova- 
tions were made to witness in their favour. 

These various documents, which were known 
finally as the ‘‘ Forged Decretals,” began to be 
circulated about the middle of the ninth century. 
They had become accepted and authoritative 
about the middle of the tenth. A century later, 
they were woven into the canon law, and were 
held to be an essential part of the ecclesiastical 
fabric.. These forgeries were so clumsy and 
unscholarly that, when learning revived, their 
origin was soon discovered: thus, in the end, 
they defeated their own purpose, and, instead of 
helping Rome, they are a clear witness to the 
aggressions made by it upon the old rights and 
freedom of the national Churches. They help 
to mark the stages in the papal usurpation. 

The defence made for the false Decretals is 
that, if the papal claims had not had some real 
foundation, these forgeries would never have 
been able to succeed. This argument does not 
meet the facts. Every one of the papal claims 
has been resisted at some time or in some place, 
but the resistance was never organized and 
systematic. The conservative churchmen never 
united against the innovator. The civil and 
ecclesiastical authorities never combined against 
the usurper. The advantage was always with 
the centralizing power, which was able to utilize 
defeats and even enemies for its ultimate 


England and the Papacy. 27 


advantage. The lower clergy were made use of 
to curtail the ancient constitutional authority of 
bishops. The grievances and appeals of bishops 
were utilized to humble the metropolitans. The 
exemptions of the monasteries were utilized to 
weaken and impoverish the diocesan organiza- 
tion; as, later, the privileges of the Friars 
damaged the parochial morality, discipline, and 
revenues. Kings and churchmen were played 
one against the other, to the lowering of both. 
The quarrels of nations and sovereigns were 
turned to the advantage of the Papacy. 

In all this, there must have been some delibe- 
rate misdoing; but the process is only another 
instance of natural development, by an organized 
and a centralizing power. The error is in jus- 
tifying this development, by attributing it to 
supernatural or divine authority. The Papacy, 
no doubt, like all centralizing powers, would 
have developed its authority, and to a large 
extent, without the ‘‘ Forged Decretals.” Never- 
theless, these outrageous frauds, and the ignor- 
ance which alone made them successful, contri- 
buted very largely to build up the feudal Papacy 
of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. 

_We may now record a few of the more 
important stages in the development of the 
medizval and feudal Papacy. In 680, Pope 
Agatho, notwithstanding the denunciations and 
repudiation of Gregory I., assumed the title of 
‘‘Universal Patriarch.” In 752, Pope Zachary 
began to send out legates, thus asserting his 
authority over other bishops. In 840, the false 
Decretals were published. Twenty years later, 
they were used by Nicholas I. to challenge and 
lessen the old authority of archbishops. 

In 1050, celibacy was imposed by law upon all 


28 England and the Papacy. 


persons in holy orders: a scandalous infringement 
of ancient liberty. In the same year, Interdicts 
began; and they were a still graver invasion 
of the liberties and rights of laymen. In 1061, 
Alexander II. claimed the right of confirming 
the appointment of all bishops; that is, he 
asserted a right of veto on all appointments. In 
1059, the election of Popes, which had been the 
act of the Roman people, was usurped by the 
Cardinals ; and by 1100 the laity were excluded 
from choosing any bishop. The old popular 
and democratic nature of the Church was thus 
destroyed, and it was narrowed into a clerical 
and an hierarchical institution. In 1066, monas- 
teries began to be exempted from episcopal 
visitation and control. This was a heavy blow 
to the episcopate ; and it not only added enor- 
mously to the wealth and patronage of the Popes, 
but it gave them powerful adherents in every 
diocese and kingdom. 

In 1073, Gregory VII. began to reign. He 
had long ruled, and he established all the new 
prerogatives claimed by the Roman Court. His 
life was an unceasing battle with the civil power. 
His pretext was the investiture of the clergy, by 
laymen, with the temporalities of their benefices. 
In reality, he deprived the Emperors of their old 
supremacy over the Church; and he secured for 
the Popes their independent sovereignty over 
the papal states, as well as their superiority over 
all other sovereigns. In effect, he turned the 
medizval Papacy into a rigid feudal organiza- 
tion, of which the Pope was not only the eccle- 
siastical chief, but he claimed to be the temporal 
lord, so far as Church property and clerical 
persons were concerned. The clergy were thus 
separated in feeling and interest from the laity. 


England and the Papacy. 29 


They were made into a caste, with laws and 
privileges of their own. Before long, the 
secular tribunals were forbidden to deal with 
ecclesiastics; and the Popes went on to claim the 
rights of taxation, of patronage, and of appellate 
jurisdiction. 


CHAPTER Wie 


THE NORMAN AND PAPAL CONQUEST OF 
ENGLAND. 


HE Norman adventurers in Italy had done 
much to establish the temporal power of 
the Popes. In Normandy, they had been zea- 
lous for those reforms which, as an ironical and 
indirect consequence, had extended the papal 
authority. From all the developments and 
reforms which have been mentioned, England 
stood aloof. Our stolid conservatism was very 
offensive to the advancing Papacy, and was 
indeed a standing protest against its usurpations. 
Accordingly, the plan of conquering England 
through the Normans was welcomed eagerly 
by the Roman Court. The Pope blessed and 
encouraged William’s expedition. If the term 
Crusade had been invented, it would have been 
applied to the invasion of England. It was, in 
fact, a papal crusade against our spiritual liber- 
ties, as well as a Norman attack upon our 
national independence. The effect of it was to 
place our government, both in Church and 
State, in the hands of foreigners. 

Such culture as we had among us was foreign, 
and not English, for nearly three centuries. 
The Church, the great instrument of culture, 
which touched the national life and thought at 
every point, was even more affected than the 


England and the Papacy. ot 


State by this amazing revolution. The rulers of 
the Church, the bishops and abbots, were almost 
invariably foreign. The old religious orders 
were reformed by Norman and alien superiors. 
New orders came into the island, bringing with 
them foreign methods and foreign thought. 
The English clergy lost, to a large extent, their 
national feeling ; and also, we must own, their 
insularity. They became, more fully than before, 
members of an international organization. 

There were, however, compensations as well 
as losses in these changes. The political and 
intellectual gain to us was, in the end, great. 
The chief loss was in the growth of clericalism 
and the decline of religion. The clergy became 
more separated from the laity, more of a caste. 
This change was shown outwardly in the new 
constitution of the law courts, in which the 
higher clergy no longer sat as judges. The 
bishops had courts of their own for ecclesiastical 
affairs. This alteration was not made by the 
Pope, but by the King. 

William I. clung tenaciously to all the rights 
of his predecessors. He exercised the Royal 
Supremacy as they had. He refused to inno- 
vate, to relinquish any of the old prerogatives, 
or to recognize any of the new papal claims. 
He refused to swear fealty to the Pope, or to pay 
any tax which had not been customary, or to 
allow any change in the relations between the 
Crown and the Papacy. The Conqueror and 
his sons maintained the old rights of the Church 
and Nation, and handed them on unimpaired in 
form. 

The foreign and innovating spirit of the 
clergy was, however, irresistible. There were 
serious quarrels between the Crown and the 


32 obser and the Papacy. 


papal clergy under Rufus and Henry I.; and, 
in the anarchy of Stephen, the position of the 
churchmen was materially strengthened. The 
final battle was fought under Henry II. That 
great sovereign contended for law and justice. 
He wished to make all men equal before the law 
and amenable to justice. The clergy, led by 
Becket, resisted him. Through the accident of 
Becket’s murder, their resistance was successful. 
Henry was clearly in the right, so far as prin- 
ciples are concerned. The immunities which 
Becket claimed were unknown here before the 
Conquest; they were also incompatible with 
justice, and the rights of the civil power. The 
Constitutions of Clarendon represented the old 
freedom and practice of the national Church. 
As usual, the Papacy was the innovator, and 
the English King stood out for the older rights 
and constitution of the Church. Becket’s argu- 
ments were founded upon a mere quibble; his 
principles led to injustice and corruption. They 
contributed, more perhaps than any other single 
cause, to make the Reformation both inevitable 
and anti-clerical. 

The principles of Henry II. are approved and 
practised now in every civilized country, without 
any danger to religion or any injustice to the 
clergy. The immediate_victory of Becket has 
proved that nothing is more disastrous for a 
State, and still more for a Church, than a clergy 
which considers itself above and outside the 
common law, or separate in any way from the 
general interests and life of the community. 

From the clerical victory over Henry II. 
that is, from about 1170; we may date the more 
complete subjection of the Anglican hierarchy 
to the See of Rome. From that date, the papal 


England and the Papacy. 3 


canon law and the papal theology were current 
and unquestioned here, as in the other Churches 
and kingdoms of the West. The nation, how- 
ever, as distinguished from the hierarchy, never 
lost the memory of its ancient freedom. It never 
accepted the papal usurpations without protest. 
Its protests are marked clearly in the statutes 
of the realm; and the scandalous mis-use of 
authority by the Roman Court, its continual 
aggressions and encroachments, its greed and 
its venality, its abuse of patronage, and its 
opposition to all reform, are borne witness to 
during the three-and-a-half centuries in which 
the papal jurisdiction was imposed upon the 
English clergy. 

The necessities of Richard I. and the reck- 
lessness of John increased the Pope’s authority 
in England. John, among his many blunders, 
quarrelled with the Pope; and then, to secure 
peace, as well as to gain a protector, he made 
himself a vassal of Innocent III., and his king- 
dom into a fief of the Papal States. He had 
no legal and constitutional right or powers 
to do either. Innocent, instead of rebuking 
John for violating his coronation oath, accepted 
the illegal donation, with the homage and a 
tribute. As this tribute was claimed until long 
afterwards, with arrears, John’s illegal proceed- 
ings were taken seriously by Rome, and claims 
to suzerainty were founded on them. Innocent 
always took the part of John against the Eng- 
lish People and their liberties. He condemned 
Magna Charta as wrong in itself, and as a rebel- 
lion against his own feudal supremacy. John 
was released by the Pope from all the engage- 
ments he had entered into with his people. The 
so-called spiritual arbiter judged and acted in 

3 


34 England and the Papacy. 


this case entirely in his own interests, from the 
standpoint of his own immediate and temporal 
advantage. 

In the end, these temporal and feudal claims 
of the papal Court roused the national spirit, and 
made it easier to expel the usurped ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction of the Roman See. By the irony of 
fate, it is only in countries which are ruled upon 
the principles of the offending Charter that the 
adherents of the Pope are now quite free from 
State control or from active political hostility. 

Innocent III. completed, organized, and ex- 
tended the feudal ecclesiasticism of Gregory VII. 
The essence of feudalism is not in the method of 
inheritance or descent, but in the mode of tenure 
and the fact of subordination. It is useless to 
argue, aS some apologists do, that the celibacy 
of the clergy saved the Church from being a 
feudal institution. It saved the clergy from 
being, ostensibly and generally, an hereditary 
caste. It did not save the ecclesiastical organi- 
zation from copying the feudal system. The 
analogy of military fiefs was applied to bene- 
fices. The beneficed clergy, in their various 
grades, from parish priests to the archbishops, 
became practically the ‘‘men” of the Pope; 
just as in England the landowners, great and 
small, became the ‘‘men” of the King. Inno- 
cent III. wrote and spoke like a supreme feudal 
over-lord ; ignoring, when it suited him, the 
rights of all subordinates, as in the appointment 
of Archbishop Langton, which was so happy 
in its results though so indefensible in its 
procedure. 

During the minority of Henry III., various 
efforts were made by the Popes to utilize John’s 
vassalage, by extending their authority over 


England and the Papacy. a5 


political as well as ecclesiastical affairs. We 
were saved by the patriotic wisdom and spirit of 
the Baronage, aided by a few bishops, from 
becoming a dependency of Rome, governed by 
Roman legates. Langton, Hubert de Burgh, 
Grosseteste, Simon Earl of Leicester, and Bishop 
Cantilupe of Worcester, defended the liberties of 
England against the Crown and the Papacy 
during the various periods of Henry’s long and 
miserable reign. The papal exactions and ag- 
gressions were incessant during those fifty years. 
As feudal superior, the Pope demanded a tribute 
from the whole kingdom; as head of the Church, 
he claimed the power of taxing ecclesiastical 
persons and property. He claimed the right of 
appointing to benefices, and he gave or sold 
them continually to foreigners. Bishoprics were 
taxed heavily at every change of occupant. The 
monasteries were allowed to appropriate livings ; 
and they provided inefficiently, where they pro- 
vided at all, for the cure of souls. 

The exemption of certain monasteries did 
immense harm to the diocesan organization and 
to the parochial system. The special powers and 
licences granted to the Friars increased the mis- 
chief, and were the cause of a more active super- 
stition and corruption. Pardons for any crime 
and exemptions from every obligation were 
to be had for money. Papal collectors were 
over here continually, arranging these financial 
matters and sending their profits to the Roman 
Court. To that court, also, went an increasing 
number of appeals, as the more serious and 
paying business was gradually withdrawn from 
the local authorities and transferred to Rome. 

This state of things began, for England, 
under Innocent III. (1198-1216), and it lasted at 

3-2 


36 England and the Papacy. 


its height until Boniface VIII. (1294-1303). By 
that time, the Papacy had made itself intolerable. 
A strong anti-papal opposition was roused in 
England ; it was gradually organized and found 
expression, and it never died away. The Great 
Schism, the migration of the Popes to Avignon, 
the war with France, the dependence of the 
Pope upon our French enemy, the exportation 
of money into his country, the presence of his 
adherents and subjects in our alien priories, as 
well as in many positions of trust and wealth, 
all added to the national discontent and the 
sense of danger. Both of these feelings are 
recorded in the statutes of the realm, and in what 
is reported of our parliamentary discussions. 

The discipline and morals of the medizval 
Church in England were destroyed in this 
period of papal misrule and usurpation. Nota 
single measure of reform was suggested by 
Rome. On the contrary, the Court of Rome is 
invariably accused, by rulers and ecclesiastics 
everywhere, as the chief cause of all corruption, 
especially of simony, and as the great obstacle 
to reform. 

A reformation, without Rome, or in spite of it, 
was inevitable. It was deferred, in England, by 
the hundred years war with France, and then by 
our dynastic battles. But for these urgent occu- 
pations, the Papacy and the Religious Orders 
would probably have been dealt with before the 
sixteenth century. They did not, in fact, long 
survive the restoration of order, and the re-estab- 
lishment of a firm central administration. 

From the fourteenth century, Reformation 
had been in the air; not only in England but 
throughout Europe, and especially in those 
countries where the MHussites had carried 


England and the Papacy. 37 


Wyclif’s teachings into practice. The councils 
of the fifteenth century spoke much about 
Reform, and they tried in vain to begin with 
the Court of Rome. The medizval clergy were 
dying of their own corruption. From the head 
downwards, they had no healing power in them- 
selves. Bishop Stubbs points clearly to their 
deterioration through the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries, as well as to the growing want of 
sympathy and touch between the higher clergy 
and the people. In place of the national and 
popular bishops of the thirteenth century, we 
find in the prelates of the following ages cour- 
tiers, mere creatures of the administration. The 
feudal churchmen, like the feudal baronage, had 
had their day. They had done good work in 
the earlier middle ages, but they merely cum- 
bered the ground and hindered progress, after 
the thirteenth century. 

Everything proves that the English Refor- 
mation was no sudden storm, and no mere 
theological episode. Its causes went deep into 
every sphere of national and social life. Politi- 
cally and ecclesiastically, it was a deliberate 
revival of that sounder and more national 
condition which had prevailed in Church and 
State before the Norman and papal Conquest. 
Theologically, it was a revolt against false and 
unhistorical Catholicism ; against the material, 
sacerdotal, innovating dogmas and practices of 
Innocent III. and his Lateran Council. It was 
a deliberate return to more primitive ways of 
belief and worship; a deliberate repudiation of 
the medizval Papacy and its theology. Spiritu- 
ally, it meant a desire to regain Christianity as 
it is found in the New Testament, and as it 
was not found in the papal and medieval 


38 England and the Papacy. 


Church. Intellectually, it meant the revival of 
sound learning, the recovery of Greek, of the 
original Scriptures, of Christian history and 
literature; a release from the limitations and 
ignorance of the middle ages. 

This ignorance was not the fault of indivi- 
duals, nor altogether of institutions. It was a 
misfortune caused by the whole condition of 
western Europe during the middle ages. Not 
only were the language, literature, and Church 
organization of the earlier centuries lost, but 
the freedom, flexibility, and fruitfulness of the 
Greek spirit were lost as well. Western Europe, 
composed entirely of unformed and barbarous 
peoples, was shut up within itself for nearly a 
thousand years, with a debased form of Latin 
for its one vehicle of thought and speech, and 
with only a few scattered and perverted shreds 
of knowledge as its inheritance from the great 
past. Naturally, in this ignorance and isola- 
tion, its point of view was narrowed and dis- 
torted. All sense of proportion and connexion 
was destroyed. Every true standard of judg- 
ment and comparison was removed. Those 
ages could only look at the past through them- 
selves, and through their own inadequate experi- 
ences. They applied this curious and wrong 
perspective to every species of knowledge: to 
their religion and theology, no less than to their 
history and science. Hence that strange ming- 
ling of Christianity and the classics which we 
find in Dante. No difference was perceived by 
medieval thinkers between history and legend, 
between facts and fancies. Theories were often 
mistaken by them for proofs, phrases for reali- 
ties, syllogisms for truths. Most outrageous 
of all were their blunders in philology or 


England and the Papacy. 39 


grammar, and most fatal in their results. The 
true values of their knowledge had been lost. 
They had no perspective, no criticism, no sense 
for historical shades of difference. We can still 
realize their point of view as we look at early 
paintings. The heroes of Greece and Rome, 
the characters of the Old and New Testaments, 
were made to wear the clothes, and speak the 
language, and think the thoughts of the middle 
ages. They were made to use medieval terms, 
and medizval notions were read into their 
genuine words and thoughts. History, philo- 
sophy, theology, the holy Scriptures themselves, 
all wore a medieval dress and were regarded 
solely from a medizval point of view. 

It is fatuous to dispute whether people in the 
middle ages had, or had not, the Bible. Con- 
ceding they had it, and used it as freely as some 
controversialists try to prove, it was of little 
use to them so long as they could only read it 
through medizval glasses. The clergy were in 
the same case as the laity, in spite of their 
textual knowledge, their frequent and happy use 
of Biblical phrases. They had no clue to Scrip- 
ture or Church history, until Greek learning and 
scholarly methods were restored. The earth 
and the whole material universe were limited in 
a similar way by medizval ignorance. 

We must always allow for the medieval 
point of view, and the limitations of medizval 
thinkers, when we examine their institutions and 
their thought. We must not let them bias or 
dominate our own wider and truer knowledge of 
the past. We have all allowed for, and escaped 
from, their deficiencies in secular history and 
literature. We have by no means all escaped 
from them yet in theology and Church govern- 


40 England and the Papacy. 


ment. Nor will a large number of Christians 
be able to escape from these consecrated blunders 
until they realize that the papal and Petrine 
claims, the ‘‘ Donation of Constantine,” and all 
that depends on these legends, are precisely on 
the same level, are of as much or as little value, 
as any other medieval, ignorant, or childish 
interpretations of history, philology, and the 
classics. 

To form an equitable notion about the papal 
and medieval Church is neither an easy nor a 
simple matter. Too many extreme and exag- 
gerated notions have been presented to us from 
both sides. It would be difficult to say which 
extreme has done greater mischief. A fair notion 
can only be gained by a vast number of indepen- 
dent and scattered facts, gathered from many 
sources, some direct, some indirect, differing 
much in value and in kind, but all converging in 
the same direction, and all uniting at last into a 
great and solid mass of evidence, which must be 
accepted if we are to accept anything in history. 
Sift it, minimise it, make every allowance for 
error and exaggeration, every allowance for pre- 
judice or half-knowledge in our own time, for 
credulity and malice in the past, enough remains 
to form a case which cannot be substantially 
altered by ourselves. That was the case with 
which the Reformers had to deal, and they dealt 
with it in peril of their lives. It is easier for us 
to blame them than to imitate their courage and 
their wisdom. That case formed then, and it 
forms now, a terrible indictment against the 
Roman Court; against its origin, its develop- 
ment, its principles, its methods, and its results. 

These broad conclusions of history may not 
be acceptable to modern Romanists; but, if 


England and the Papacy. 4l 


they be not accepted as substantially true, then 
the best theologians of the fifteenth century, and 
the ecclesiastical authorities of the sixteenth, by 
their policy, by their own statements about the 
nature and necessity of a reform in discipline, 
were themselves the authors of a_ deliberate 
and monstrous libel against the whole body of 
the clergy, Secular as well as Regular, and 
especially against the papal Court. Their 
apologists and successors may take whichever 
alternative they choose. 

But, putting morality and abuses on one side, 
the most serious indictment against the papal 
and medieval Church, so far as we are con- 
cerned, may be brought to a simpler test, and 
one not open to dispute. The medieval Popes 
and their theologians did not know either the 
Old or the New Testament in the original. 
They knew little of the times and circumstances 
in which the Scriptures rose, or to which they 
referred. They knew as little of the ages fol- 
lowing the New Testament, and of Christian an- 
tiquity. Their general knowledge of the Fathers 
was through translations ; and even these, toa 
large extent, were spurious or garbled. Their 
knowledge of the acts and canons of the impor- 
tant councils was tainted by forgeries and mis- 
translation. They had forgotten many of the 
laws and the whole organization of the earlier 
and united Church, and they had outraged most 
of those laws which they had not forgotten. 
Their own ecclesiastical fabric was built up on 
forgery, and chicanery, and successful usurpa- 
tions. It had culminated, quite logically from 
such premisses, in the Papacy of Boniface VIII., 
with all his impious attributes and claims. 
Would any man or any institution, with such 


42 England and the Papacy. 


credentials as these, be accepted now as of the 
least authority in any science or any branch of 
learning? Yet this is precisely the case of the 
medizval and papal Church. It is out of court 
as an authority on the sole plea of incompetence. 


CEEAPTER VEL 


THe New LEARNING AND THE ENGLISH 
REFORMATION. 


ITH Henry VIII., we seem to enter upon 

a new and a larger world. Indeed, a 

new world was opening in many senses, and 
upon every side, at the dawn of the sixteenth 
century. Copernicus had enlarged and cor- 
rected men’s notions of the material universe. 
Columbus had found another hemisphere, al- 
though the Inquisition had proved it could not 
exist. Constantinople had fallen in 1453; and 
the Greek treasures so long imprisoned and 
isolated in it were scattered over western 
Europe. Printing enabled all this fresh and 
vivifying knowledge to be circulated wholesale. 

The recovery of Greek re-opened a greater 
world of human experience and thought. It 
not only restored the ancient literature, and 
broader ways of conceiving life, but it revived 
that free, flexible, reasonable tone of mind, 
which was the strength and glory of the Hellenic 
civilization, though perhaps a cause of weakness 
to the Grecian States. 

The nations of the West were able at last 
to escape out of their medizval prison; to 
handle things and living facts, instead of play- 
ing with syllogisms, and weaving idle theories. 
They were enabled to judge the present by 


44 England and the Papacy. 


the past; that is, by a standard higher and 
truer than their own. Their perspective was 
corrected and enlarged. Weapons almost of 
precision were put into their hands. The origi- 
nal New Testament was restored to them, as 
well as a truer knowledge of Christian antiquity 
and of the great Fathers. They were able to 
breathe again the free air of Scriptural and 
primitive Christianity. ‘‘The paths trodden 
by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old 
things were passing away, and the faith and 
life of ten centuries were dissolving like a 
dream. The abbey and the castle were soon 
together to crumble into ruins; and all the 
forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old 
[medizeval?] world were passing away, never to 
return. A new continent had risen up beyond 
the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid 
with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss 
of immeasurable space; and the firm earth 
itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to 
be but a small atom in the awful vastness of 
the universe. In the fabric of habit which they 
had so laboriously built for themselves man- 
kind were to remain no longer.” 

That process began, at any rate, in the 
sixteenth century: it still continues, with un- 
checked, enlarging, and irresistible advances 
against the whole dominion of error, of ignor- 
ance, and of spiritual bondage. There are 
three or four separate elements in the English 
Reformation, which must not be confused by 
those who wish to understand it rather than 
to blame or praise it. First, there was the 
King’s divorce, which, on both sides, brought 
a narrow, an irritating, and a personal factor 
into the dispute between the Crown and the 


England and the Papacy. A5 


Papacy. Following this, and embittered by it, 
was our repudiation of the papal claims and 
jurisdiction. Next, and most important, there 
was the Reformation proper of the English 
Church, in doctrine, discipline, and constitu- 
tion: its restoration to Catholic, primitive, 
Scriptural, and therefore apostolic or evangeli- 
cal Christianity. Depending from this, partly 
ecclesiastical, but much more social and politi- 
cal, was the dissolution of the Religious Houses 
and the resumption of their property. 

As to the divorce, it must be remembered 
that Henry’s marriage was dubious and un- 
edifying from the beginning. It was always 
doubtful whether Julius I]. had not exceeded 
his powers in granting a dispensation for the 
marriage with a brother's widow. It is not 
credible, in the teeth of facts and custom, in 
spite of Katharine’s oath, that the condition was 
not violated upon which alone Pope Julius 
owned that he could lawfully dispense, and 
upon which the validity of the dispensation was 
based. The whole question turned upon the 
extent and limits of the Pope’s authority ; and 
of this, it is impossible to think that the Pope 
himself could be a satisfactory, a final, or an 
impartial judge. Moreover, the question was 
raised at the very time when the Pope’s authority 
itself was being challenged, and when the 
Roman Courts had been long notorious for 
venality, for extortion, for cynical delays and 
miscarriages of justice. 

The matter of the succession was undoubtedly 
genuine and serious. It filled the country with 
anxiety and fears, especially after the recent ex- 
perience of civil war. There was no precedent 
for a female sovereign, except the disputed and 


46 England and the Papacy. 


ill-omened case of Henry the First’s daughter. 
Had the cause been judged dispassionately, 
on itS merits, even though the marriage had 
been beyond suspicion, there can be little 
doubt that the succession would have been held 
sufficient to justify a divorce. It is the fashion, 
juggling with words, to assert that the ‘‘ Catholic 
Church” does not allow divorce: nevertheless, 
under different and less honest names, dissolu- 
tions of marriage were perpetual, easily obtained, 
and generally scandalous, throughout the middle 
ages. 
cee undoubtedly had a good case. With 
as little doubt, he spoilt it and behaved shame- 
fully. This does not alter the impersonal 
merits of his case. The Pope, too, as we must 
remember, was not free from partialities and 
selfish interests. Henry’s wife and sister-in-law 
was also the Emperor’s aunt. The Pope had 
been the Emperor’s prisoner, and was his help- 
less tool, his puppet in a large scheme of policy. 
The Papal States and the territories of the 
Pope’s family were at the mercy of Charles V. 
Clement was not, therefore, either a free or an 
impartial judge. The personal element vitiates 
not only Henry’s case, but Katharine’s case, 
and still more the Pope’s handling of it. Most 
of all, it disqualifies the judge and his tribunals. 
It proves, amongst other things, that the Papal 
States are an insuperable barrier to the Pope’s 
freedom, and to Roman impartiality. Besides 
all this, it was unprecedented, and under the 
circumstances it was both dangerous and in- 
tolerable, that the King of England should be 
summoned personally to plead in Rome, where 
he would be in the power of the Emperor. 

So much, then, for the Divorce, which cer- 


England and the Papacy. 47 


tainly proved the need of reforming the papal 
courts and jurisdiction ; but which was not the 
origin, though it was one of the provocative 
causes, of the English Reformation. 

The repudiation of the Pope’s authority 
followed as a consequence from the doubts 
and quarrels raised by the Divorce. In 1529, 
a Parliament met, which sat for seven years, 
and carried through our deliverance from the 
Roman Court and bishopric. In 1533, all 
appeals to Rome were forbidden. Parliament 
then decreed that the payment of Annates 
to Rome should cease; and this revenue was 
confiscated from the Pope in 1534. The same 
year, another Act was passed abolishing the 
whole of the papal jurisdiction in England. 
Convocation voted that ‘‘the bishop of Rome 
hath no greater jurisdiction conferred on him 
by God in this kingdom of England than any 
other foreign bishop.” In 1535, the Act of 
Supremacy was passed; and the King was 
entitled ‘‘Supreme Head of the Church of 
England.” In all this, there was nothing new 
or revolutionary. It was a return to the ancient 
ways, a re-assertion of older freedom, a carrying 
into effect of that which had long been thought, 
and expressed in legal form. 

In the eleventh century, William I. forbad 
excommunications, the calling of synods, or the 
entrance and acceptance of papal documents, 
without his leave. These enactments met the 
whole papal usurpation, so far as it had then 
developed. In the next century, the question 
of Investitures was settled in England by a 
compromise, which abated nothing of the Royal 
Supremacy over all persons. It was the position 
maintained by the Conqueror, which Henry 


48 England and the Papacy. 


II. re-affirmed in the Constitutions of Clarendon. 
The Pope’s demand for taxes from the clergy 
was rejected in 1226, but he levied a tenth in 
1229. The extortion of Annates was obtained 
under false pretences in 1256. 

In the next century, however, the Statute of 
Provisors was enacted to restrain the abuses 
and encroachments of papal patronage; and 
the Statutes of Pramunire were aimed at the 
usurped and growing jurisdiction of the Roman 
courts. Weak sovereigns often gave up the 
interests of the clergy to the Popes; but the 
Royal Supremacy was always exercised both in 
theory and in practice. The Crown always 
limited the papal jurisdiction. It reserved to 
itself the right of admitting or rejecting papal 
decrees, and of authorising or refusing the 
exercise of legatine and other delegatal powers. 
No new principle was thus initiated by Henry 
VIII. He only made more effective those prin- 
ciples which had been asserted continuously 
since the eleventh century, and which before 
that had not required an assertion. The Royal 
Supremacy did not replace a papal supremacy, 
as is too often supposed. 

There is no parallel whatever between the 
medizeval Church of England and the modern 
papal Church in England, with regard to the 
Papacy. Between the twelfth century and the 
sixteenth, the papal jurisdiction was allowed, 
grudgingly, partially, always under protest. 
In the sixteenth century it was frankly and 
honestly abolished, according to the spirit of 
those laws which had been passed in the four- 
teenth to restrain and protest against it. A 
lawless usurpation was put down in a legal and 
constitutional way, by a return to older and 


England and the Papacy. ke) 


sounder practices. In this matter, the Pope and 
the medizeval theologians were the innovators. 
The legislation of Henry VIII. and the Re- 
formers was, so far as the Papacy is concerned, 
a conservative and constitutional reaction. 


CHAPTER VIIE 


THE DISENDOWMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS 
ORDERS. 


‘-‘HE Papacy might be described, in one 
of Matthew Arnold’s phrases, as ‘the 
eternal mundane spectacle.” It forces every 
question with which it is concerned to be more 
political than religious. It soils religion with 
diplomacy, politics, and sordid financial inter- 
ests. This inherent defect of the papal theory, 
system, and methods is illustrated by the his- 
tory of the Religious Orders in England. The 
Benedictine monks and monasteries had been of 
great use to England in the centuries of settle- 
ment. They did good work for learning, for 
agriculture, for trade, for the development of 
towns. After the Conquest, there was a rapid 
growth in the numbers and nature of the Reli- 
gious Orders. We find the various reforms 
of the Benedictines, such as Carthusians and 
Cistertians, entering the country; and, in the 
thirteenth century, the Franciscans, the Domini- 
cans, the Carmelites, and other Friars increased 
the number of the Religious Houses. The new 
Orders, unlike the Benedictines, were centra- 
lized, and governed from Rome. 

There were about six hundred houses of men 
and women in England at the Dissolution. The 
great majority had been founded before the 
reign of Richard II.; that is, between 1066 and 
1366. Only eight houses were founded in the 
fifteenth century, as against one hundred-and- 


England and the Papacy. 5! 


fifty-seven in the reign of Henry III. On the 
other hand, sixty foundations for charity and 
learning were endowed in the fifteenth century. 
From the time of Edward III. onwards, we find 
colleges, schools, hospitals, and alms-houses 
being endowed in the place of monasteries. 
These figures show that the monastic founda- 
tions had outgrown their usefulness. They had 
also, in consequence, to a large extent outgrown 
their popularity. 

The Peasants’ Rising in the fourteenth cen- 
tury shows how unpopular the monks were as 
landlords, and how they obstructed progress. 
They clung to antiquated rights and customs, 
which had grown into flagrant injustices. They 
were the slowest of the landowners to abolish 
serfdom. They obstructed the freedom and 
progress of the towns on their estates. In 
the reactionary and repressive measures which 
followed the Rising, the monks were both vin- 
dictive and treacherous. The destruction of 
monastic property was in many cases a popular 
vengeance, long delayed, but carried out heartily 
and thoroughly in the end. 

The revenues of the Orders, too, were both 
excessive in themselves and a danger to the 
State. The revenues of the clergy under Henry 
VAIL. might be put at £500,000 a year; and of 
this, the Religious Orders probably enjoyed 
over £300,000. The landed estates and rentals 
of the clergy are recorded accurately; their extra 
revenues, which came from innumerable sources, 
form the difficulty in estimating. The revenue 
of Henry’s Government has been estimated at 
#125,000 a year. We are quite safe in multi- 
plying by ten, if we wish to estimate the current 
or spending values of these incomes. 


4—2 


52 England and the Papacy. 


Now the clerical revenues were so heavily 
taxed by Rome that they could not pay their 
due proportion of taxes to the Crown. The 
Friars were not taxed at all; as, by a papal 
fiction, they possessed no real property. The 
incomes of the clergy, over and above their 
endowments in land, and their exportations of 
produce, were neither estimated nor taxed. 
The whole amount paid by them to their 
absentee sovereign in Italy, and to his non- 
resident nominees, was a dead loss to the king- 
dom. In the time of the French war, it had 
proved a serious danger. In any collision with 
the Papacy, England was occupied by wealthy 
and numerous corporations, whose interests 
were more papal than patriotic, whose persons 
and properties were at the disposal of an alien 
authority. The wealth of the Religious Orders 
was really a social question. Their position, 
their dependence on Rome, made the question 
political. Besides, the financial state of the 
Religious Houses was neither: edifying nor 
possible to mend. Many of the smaller houses 
were bankrupt in money, and mortgaged beyond 
recovery. All the greater houses were bank- 
rupt in men. They failed to attract subjects, in 
spite of all they had to offer. At Saint Alban’s, 
for instance, with an income of £20,000 a.year, 
in current value, there were only thirty-seven 
monks. Glastonbury had an income of.more 
than £30,000 a year, and very few monks. It 
is difficult to see why smail communities of 
clergymen should require these vast incomes 
to practice poverty. 

The morality of the Religious Houses is a 
more disputable question. In any case, it was 
not above suspicion. It had been the subject 


-England and the Papacy. 53 


of much and of long complaint. It could not be 
dealt with regularly except through the Pope ; 
and, in this case, as in all others, Rome was the 
standing obstacle to Reform. It would not act 
itself; it had exempted many of the monks from 
episcopal visitation and control; it would not 
allow a lay authority to interfere. In this policy, 
Rome has persisted to the present day. Pius 
IX. was asked in vain to reform the Italian 
Orders. He refused ; and the State, in despair, 
abolished them. The Pope is reported to have 
said, in private, that ‘‘their destruction was the 
only reform possible.” The present conflict in 
France, the dangers and damage caused to the 
State by active and wealthy corporations depend- 
ing on a foreign power, may show us how far 
more real and serious were the dangers incurred 
by Henry VIII. in his battle with the Papacy for 
civil freedom and ecclesiastical reformation. 

In the process of dissolution, there was no 
doubt much to be regretted and blamed. There 
was much unavoidable distress and suffering to 
individuals. There was much injustice, and 
there were many high-handed proceedings. 
There must have been considerable dishonesty 
among the agents who carried it through, and 
the petty local authorities who had so many 
opportunities for jobbery and plunder. These 
blemishes do not affect the general question, nor 
the broad principles involved in it. Is the 
Crown of England sovereign or dependent? 
Had the Crown a lawful right to deal with this 
vast question of persons and property, which 
affected the health and safety of the nation; or 
could it only act in dependence on a foreign 
power, whose financial and political interests 
were concerned in opposing all reform? These 


54 England and the Papacy. 


are the broad principles involved; and there 
could only be one solution of them. 

Dissolutions were as old as Richard II., and 
the originator of them was Bishop Wykeham. 
The alien priories had been confiscated under 
Henry V. Wolsey had dissolved many Reli- 
gious Houses, and transferred their revenues to 
his educational foundations. 

Henry VIII. did not, fortunately, as it is 
often asserted, seize the monastic revenues him- 
self ; or the Crown would have become indepen- 
dent, and we know it remained poor. Nor did 
he squander them on worthless courtiers. The 
new families, established throughout the country 
by Henry VIII., on the monastic lands, were a 
firm barrier against reaction during the six- 
teenth century. They were the backbone of 
Parliament in the revolutions of the seventeenth. 
Henry VIII. thus gave us the supporters of 
Elizabeth, the opponents of the Stuarts, the 
leaders of the Whig Oligarchy in 1688 and 1714. 

No better use could probably have been made, 
at the time, of these endowments. The paro- 
chial needs of the country were more than pro- 
vided for by the church accommodation and 
revenues of the sixteenth century. Education 
was fairly provided for by the endowments of 
Edward VI. The country would have been 
pauperized if the monastic revenues had been 
given to charity. It is unfair to blame Henry 
and his Government because they did not foresee 
the population and the complex needs of our own 
time. Some of the monastic property, too, was 
employed by Henry VIII. in building forts, fur- 
nishing arsenals, and resisting those invasions 
which the Roman Court stirred up against him. 


CHAPTER. -[X. 


THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH. 


HE Reformation proper could not have 
been carried out unless the monasteries 
had been dissolved. It would not have been 
complete or logical unless the chantries, and 
many practices favoured by the Religious 
Orders, had been suppressed. The English 
Reformation was, above all things, an appeal to 
sound learning, to primitive belief and practice, 
to ancient freedom. The corporate life and 
fabric of the old national Church were not 
touched. There was no break in continuity, 
no change in the ancient form and machinery 
of government. Scripture was made the final 
standard and arbiter of belief, as it had been to 
the early Church. Everything which could not 
meet the test of Scripture was judged to be 
merely human. It might be advisable as a 
matter of sentiment and order. It could not be 
binding as a matter of faith or conscience. 
The results of the New Learning were ac- 
cepted, and applied both to Scripture itself and 
to antiquity. By these aids, our first generation 
of Reformers abolished a great many papal 
and medizval accretions upon the ancient faith. 
Their model of belief and practice was the 
primitive Church, and not the medieval. They 
deliberately rejected the ritual, beliefs, theology, 


56 England and the Papacy. 


liturgies, and practices of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. They repudiated all the papal claims 
and usurpations. They re-asserted those liber- 
ties which had once been possessed by every 
national Church, and which our own Church 
had enjoyed until the eleventh century. 

These were the ends set by Cranmer and his > 
fellow workers before themselves. They strove 
to attain them with utter honesty, carrying their 
lives in their hands. We must admire their 
learning, which was obtained by them in spite 
of many difficulties, which was used with so 
much sobriety and judgment, which was guided 
by an instinct or insight that amounts to 
genius ; for we must remember that the False 
Decretals and various other Romanizing for- 
geries were not exposed fully until the reign 
of Elizabeth. 

The aims and attitude of the reformed Church 
of England are expressed very well, through 
the mouth of Cranmer, in Tennyson’s ‘‘ Queen 
Mary.” ‘‘Your creed will be your death,” 
Peter Martyr says to the Archbishop; and, 
indeed, the nation had to fight, almost to the 
death, to maintain its freedom in religion, upon 
which its civic liberties and its sovereignty 
over its own affairs depended also. Cranmer 
replied : 


“Step after step, 
Thro’ many voices crying right and left, 
Have I clim’d back into the primal Church, 
And stand within the porch, and Christ with me.” 


That consciousness of the divine presence ; 
that honest striving after the truth ; that reach- 
ing back through controversy, through all the 
centuries of ignorance, of official deceits, and 


England and the Papacy. oF 


of blind corruption; that effort to regain the 
‘‘primal Church,” to restore as far as possible 
the Christianity of the New Testament: these 
were the aims of our Reformers. The determi- 
nation to secure these good things enabled them 
to carry on that struggle which won our theo- 
logical and historical position; and which, 
though it was not seen clearly at the time, 
ensured our national independence, as well as 
our political and civil freedom. 

The English Reformation was a long process, 
going through many experiments, advancing 
and receding, influenced from without and from 
within. It began in 1529, and was not finished 
until 1662. Under Henry VIII., the Crown 
recovered its old and unquestioned supremacy 
over all persons and causes within its dominions. 
Henry revived no powers which had not been 
used by our native rulers before the Conquest ; 
which had not been claimed by all our Sove- 
reigns, at least in theory, after it. The Church 
of England asserted and regained those ancient 
liberties which all Churches had by right, and 
used by law, before the Papacy encroached upon 
them. In doctrine and ritual, the Reformers 
went back, as far as possible, to the standard of 
the early Church, rejecting papal and medizval 
innovations. 

There are three stages in the development of 
the papal authority, or of the Roman usurpa- 
tion, which must be distinguished from one 
another, and separated clearly in our thought, 
if we would understand the Anglican position. 
There is, first of all, the bishopric of Rome, 
between 323 and the end of Justinian’s reign. 
In that period, the Roman bishop was one 
among four or five patriarchs, who all had 


58 England and the Papacy. 


equal and co-ordinate powers, who all recog- 
nized the Imperial Supremacy, and the final 
authority of the Church in council. There was, 
next, the period between 565 and 1061, when 
the Roman bishop stood alone, cut off from the 
Greeks, exercising dependent secular authority. 
He extended his patriarchal jurisdiction, ille- 
gally, and gradually developed the medizval 
Papacy. In the early part of this period, the 
English Church was organized, and entered 
upon those relations with the Roman See which 
prevailed here between Gregory I. and Alexan- 
der II. This was the utmost extent of commu- 
nion with Rome which the English Nation and 
Church ever accepted willingly, and perhaps 
legally. Communion with the Roman bishop 
must always be distinguished from subjection 
to the papal Court. 

Between 1061 and 1300, the medieval Papacy 
developed into the feudal Papacy of Gregory 
VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII. This 
feudal Papacy encroached upon all States and 
Churches, including our own. In this period, 
new doctrines were defined, new discipline was 
imposed, the constitution and conceptions of the 
Church were transformed almost out of recog- 
nition. England met the whole course of this 
development with constitutional protests. We 
did everything that was possible to resist its 
progress. That resistance was not of much 
practical use, though it was by no means 
ineffectual. It served, at any rate, to mark the 
stages of the papal usurpation, and to preserve 
the memory of our ancient freedom. It enabled 
the Reformers to appeal from the feudal Papacy 
to an older, freer, and purer state of things. 
They could point to Rome as the innovator, the 


England and the Papacy. 59 


aggressor, and take their stand upon the earlier 
constitution of the Church. 

The Church of England stands now precisely 
where it stood then, though encompassed with 
numerous descendants and allies; all witness- 
ing, historically and theologically, against the 
medizval and the later stages of papal develop- 
ment, just as the various eastern Churches 
witness, doctrinally and historically, against 
the earlier. 


CHAPTER X. 
Henry VIII. 


ENRY VIII. was a strong man, who 
guided us, without any disaster, through 
a dangerous and an inevitable crisis. It was 
inevitable, if we were to remain true to our 
national traditions. He did a rough and neces- 
sary piece of work, with as little violence as was 
possible in that age, with those agents, and 
against the most unscrupulous of enemies. He 
kept us from serious invasion, and from a theo- 
logical civil war. The executions of individuals 
in his reign must never be judged without 
remembering the grave dangers of the State ; 
without a minute knowledge of plots and parties 
within the realm, as well as of the intrigues 
and designs of our various foreign enemies. 
Henry accomplished a difficult and a dangerous 
work, in the face of some internal opposition, 
of much external and powerful hostility. He 
“broke the bonds of Rome,” and secured our 
freedom as a Church and Nation. He gave us 
our place and function in the modern world. 
We have no right to accept that great and 
responsible inheritance without making every 
allowance for the dangers and difficulties of 
those who gained it. After all, nothing greater 
has been done in the history of England ; 
nothing which has contributed so largely to 


England and the Papacy. 61 


make us, and all the peoples descended from 
us, what we are. The Papacy was a stronger 
and a more dangerous enemy to our growth and 
freedom than were the Stuart kings. 

Henry’s faults are only too obvious ; but they 
do not outweigh his political services, nor do 
they cancel our obligations to him. Besides, 
Henry VIII. had no irresponsible or despotic 
authority. He had neither a revenue, nor an 
army, by which he could overawe his people, or 
act independently of them. Without national 
support, he could not have ruled the clergy, 
expelled the Pope, and suppressed the monks. 
Some parts of the country were, no doubt, 
against the suppression of the monasteries, 
and any changes in public worship; but the 
moie intelligent and prosperous parts, such as 
London, the towns generally, the more flourish- 
ing eastern and southern counties, were on the 
side of liberty and progress ; that is to say, they 
were strongly national in feeling, and therefore 
anti-papal. 

The distinction between Catholicism and pa- 
palism was perceived clearly, and held firmly, 
not only by Henry himself, but evidently by 
the nation as a whole; for we must remember 
that both Houses of Convocation, and all the 
bishops, including Fisher, accepted Henry’s anti- 
papal measures. They were glad to be freed 
from the papal exactions and usupations, as well 
as from the exempted and Romanizing clois- 
tered associations. 

The attitude of the more conservative English 
bishops towards Rome may be established from 
the earlier writings and policy of Gardiner. 
Henry VIII., both in what he removed and in 
what he retained, was theologically conservative, 


62 England and the Papacy. 


and he was a typical representative of the 
national feeling in religion. He took the country 
with him, in the various stages of his policy ; 
or, it might be said as truly, the nation took 
him. During his reign, there was not any 
national sympathy or movement for the papal 
cause. 

Henry intended to be and to remain a Catholic, 
as that word was used, understood, and applied 
to the Church by the makers of the Nicene 
Creed; though his knowledge of what was 
really Catholic and primitive was necessarily 
incomplete, and he accepted various beliefs and 
practices which a sounder scholarship proved 
later to have been papal and medizval in their 
origin. Henry always repudiated the term Pro- 
testant, as it was misunderstood and usurped 
by sectarians, whether Lutherans or Calvinists. 
But, whether he recognised it or no, Henry was 
a Protestant in the historical and original mean- 
ing of the word ; that is to say, while repudiat- 
ing any new confession of faith, or any changes 
in the ancient polity of the Church, he took his 
stand firmly upon holy Scripture, as the makers 
of the creeds had before him. He appealed 
from the usurped authority of the Pope to the 
final authority of Scripture in all matters of 
belief and controversy. 

After Henry’s death, much new light was 
thrown, both upon Scripture and Christian 
antiquity, by more competent scholarship and 
research, as well as by experience and the drift 
of practical affairs. For instance, the Roman- 
ism which emerged at Trent, which moulded 
and dominated the papal Church from the time 
of Henry’s death, was very different from the 
spirit which had prevailed at Constance, or from 


England and the Papacy. 63 


the ‘‘ Catholicism” which had grown up during 
the middle ages. The problems which had to 
be faced by Jewel, by Hooker, and by Usher 
were not quite the same as those with which the 
first Reformers had been obliged to deal. The 
knowledge available in the latter half of the 
sixteenth century was fuller and surer than the 
knowledge of Cranmer or even of Erasmus. 
The changes thus produced were, however, 
changes of detail and not of principle. The 
broad way of Reformation which was begun 
by Henry and his advisers was taken up and 
continued under Elizabeth, in spite of the 
two narrow and violent reactions which came 
between. Henry VIII. died as the Council of 
Trent began to sit; and the churchmen held a 
service of thanksgiving for the removal of so 
dread an enemy. MHenry’s work, however, has 
lived on, and has proved itself the most for- 
midable opponent to the false history and theo- 
logy of Trent. His death and that Council 
inaugurate a new departure. 


CHAPTER Xai 


THE COUNCIL OF TRENT AND THE NEW 
ROMANISM. 


HE attitude of the Papacy to the Reforma- 
tion has now to be considered. It was 
very different from the attitude of the English 
People. In the fifteenth century, the Council 
of Constance ended the Great Schism. It 
asserted the old and catholic principle that the 
Church in council is of higher authority than a 
Pope. It deposed the three rival occupants of 
the papal chair, whose conflicting titles, in their 
several degrees of badness and uncertainty, could 
not by any means be adjusted. The only prac- 
tical course was to put all the claimants on one 
side; and a fresh start was made by the election 
of Martin V. The Roman Court, however, 
was able to obstruct all other efforts at reform, 
though every national Church and Government 
desired it. The last chance of a constitutional 
reformation was thus destroyed by the Roman 
Court itself; and the Churches went on, help- 
lessly and hopelessly in their corruption, until 
they were destroyed or purged by the storms 
and fires of a revolution. 

Martin V. returned to Rome, and to the 
enjoyment of the Papal States, in 1420. The 
Popes who followed him resembled the Italian 
Despots of that age; fighting and scheming 


England and the Papacy. 65 


against their neighbours for additions of wealth 
and territory ; drawing immense revenues also 
from their ecclesiastical position, and thus hold- 
ing a great advantage over all other rivals by 
their spiritual prerogatives and claims. Their 
Supernatural reputation, however, was dimmed 
and tarnished by the Schism, and by all the 
scandals which had been connected for so long 
with the Roman Court and its administration. 
These scandals, both official and personal, did 
not grow less during the remainder of the fif- 
teenth century. The Pontiffs, at the end of that 
century and the beginning of the sixteenth, in- 
creased their territories, increased and endowed 
their families, and enjoyed almost incredible 
wealth and splendour; but this apparent good 
fortune was dearly bought by the abuses which 
were sapping the health and credit of the 
Church. The barque of Peter was like that 
‘* gilded vessel” in Gray’s ode, ‘‘ proudly riding” 
over the golden waters, with ‘‘ Pleasure at the 
helm,” careless of the gathering and rumbling 
storm. 

The Popes of that age welcomed the tastes 
and fashions of the Renaissance. They were 
not averse from the architecture, the decorations, 
or the titles of their predecessors, the heathen 
Emperors and Pontiffs. The Breviary, even in 
its now expurgated form, shows that they had 
no prejudices against the phraseology of the old 
Pantheon. They admired some things which 
were truly admirable in the manners and society 
of ancient Rome, but they imitated others which 
they should not even have admired. They are 
credited, however, too easily and commonly, 
with a zeal for the New Learning; with being 
its chief patrons and promoters. These Popes 


5 


66 England and the Papacy. 


did, in truth, employ sculptors, and jewellers, 
and painters, and florid builders, and honeyed 
Latinists ; the Court of Rome played and even 
rioted with the toys of the classical revival: yet 
the very same Popes, with an horde of scurril 
and ferocious ecclesiastics, opposed the more 
serious consequences and fruits of the Renais- 
sance ; that is, the application of the New Learn- 
ing to Scripture, to theology, to church history 
and government, to the natural sciences, to 
political and social questions, to intellectual and 
individual freedom. Scholars like Erasmus 
were alternately caressed and slandered by 
the upholders of the Papacy and of medizval 
ignorance. 

The Council of Trent was the final answer of 
the Papacy to the demand of Europe for a refor- 
mation. The reprisals and repressions which 
followed that Council showed what the spirit and 
methods of the new Romanism were to be. The 
Council met in 1545, and it continued inter- 
mittently for 18 years. In 1540, Paul III. had 
confirmed and authorized the Society of Jesus. 
The theology of Trent, the methods by which it 
was manoeuvred through the Council, and pro- 
pagated in Europe afterwards, were due chiefly 
to the Jesuits; whom we must regard as the 
foremost champions of the Papacy, and as the 
incarnation of that new papalism, which was 
determined at all costs, not only to reconquer 
its lost authority, but to conquer the human race 
more thoroughly than before. 

To this end, the papal authority had, by any 
and every means, to be re-affirmed, strength- 
ened, and extended. The Council, therefore, 
could not be allowed to go behind the middle 
ages and the theology of Innocent III. The 


England and the Papacy. 67 


theologians of Trent could not adopt the New 
Learning honestly, with its recovered know- 
ledge of Scripture and of Christian antiquity ; 
simply because that knowledge undermined the 
medizval Church and the foundations of the 
Pope’s authority. The medizval errors in theo- 
logy were all re-affirmed, extended, and codified, 
notwithstanding the exposure of all the forgeries 
and frauds upon which the papal system had 
been erected. Beliefs and practices, which the 
medizeval theologians had accepted in ignorance 
and good faith, were re-affirmed in bad faith and 
against the light by the wire-pullers of Trent, 
who imposed them even more rigorously upon 
their Church. The definitions of Trent were 
moulded and carried through by the Jesuits, 
solely in the interests of the Papacy, by the votes 
of illiterate, venal, dependent Italian bishops, 
the tools and creatures of the Pope. 

The numbers and nationality of the Tridentine 
bishops go far to explain the methods and theo- 
logy of this papal assembly, which cannot be 
accepted as a mouthpiece of Catholic opinion 
and beliefs. During the final sessions there 
were present 189 Italians, who for the most part 
were dependent on the Roman Court, and were 
not conspicuous for learning. There were 31 
Spaniards, 6 Portugese, and 26 Frenchmen. 
Germany and Flanders had two bishops each ; 
and there was one Englishman. That is to say, 
the Teutonic nations, who were most anxious 
about reform, had five representatives. The 
so-called Council was, for all practical purposes, 
a packed synod of Italians, who were neither 
free nor competent. The committees were so 
shuffled that a papal majority was always assured 
in each of them. The general sessions of the 


= 


68 England and the Papacy. 


Council were guided by skilful and unserupulous 
presidents, who manipulated all the discussions 
and votes in favour of the Papacy. 

Even so, the Council often embarrassed and 
alarmed the Roman Court. It was delayed, 
suspended, removed into papal territory, cajoled, 
bribed, and threatened. Its business was inter- 
rupted continually while instructions were sought 
from Rome; whence, as an ambassador re- 
ported, the Holy Ghost was sent regularly in a 
mail-bag to the presiding legate. There was a 
serious discussion, when the Council opened, as 
to whether bishops received their commission 
immediately from God, or mediately through 
the Pope. That question struck at the episcopal 
office and authority. In the ages of the great 
Councils and the Patriarchates, this question 
could not have been raised, as there was no 
Papacy. In more primitive times, the bishops 
were regarded only as witnesses to the faith ; 
they represented their congregations, and re- 
ported their beliefs. The dubious compromise 
about this difficulty left the Pope master of the 
situation: since Trent, the papal authority has 
never been Seriously questioned in an assembly 
of the Latin Church; and it has increased 
steadily, until the episcopal office has become 
little more than a delegated power, exercised, 
as the Romanized bishops now themselves 
proclaim, ‘‘ by favour of the Apostolic See.” 

The methods of controversy which were neces- 
sitated by the attitude assumed at Trent, that is 
by the defence of an unhistorical position, and the 

advocacy of a damaged case, have been perpe- 
tuated in the apologetics of the Roman Church ; 
and they have been more seriously burdened 
by the later definition of papal infallibility. They 


England and the Papacy. 69 


are a cause of intellectual and moral weakness. 
The advocates of the Papacy dare not appeal to 
the broad facts of history, or live at ease in the 
free and bracing air of modern thought, accept- 
ing the canons of scientific history and criticism. 
They are bound to be advocates manipulating a 
case, forcing it by any shifts to a foregone con- 
clusion. They cannot be disinterested or impar- 
tial enquirers, allowing facts themselves to speak 
impersonally, and deciding finally by the laws 
of evidence. The Roman Church ‘triumphs 
over history” by ignoring or outraging the facts 
which history records. It relies upon authority, 
and defies truth. It wanders ina vicious circle, 
appealing helplessly, when it.is pressed, to the 
Pope’s authority and office, which. are always 
the ultimate question in dispute.. The papal 
authority is not, as Milner boasted, ‘‘the end of 
controversy,” but is merely the end, as it is the 
starting-point, of all the Roman arguments. 
There was more talk than reality at the Papal 
Court in the matter of reform. The precedents 
and habits of Sixtus IV., Alexander VI., Julius 
II., and Leo X. were no longer followed openly 
or in the magnificent way of those gorgeous 
Pontiffs ; but the names of the Farnese, the Al- 
dobrandini, the Borghese, the Barberini, and of 
many other families, whose fortunes and palaces 
were quarried out of Saint Peter’s rock, prove 
that the affections and expenditure of Christ’s 
Vicars were very little changed or chastened by 
the Catholic Reaction. The Curia lost many 
sources of revenue, but its methods and proce- 
dure were not perceptibly or radically improved. 
Stricter laws were drawn up at Trent for the 
bishops ; but the Roman Catholic episcopates in 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries do not 


70 England and the Papacy. 


show that those regulations had much effect. 
The state of the Religious Orders during the 
same period forces us to a similar conclusion. 
The Philosophers and the Revolution of the 
eighteenth century were much more effective 
instruments of reform than the so-called Catholic 
Reaction. That Reaction meant, not so much 
a reform in morals, as a concentration of all 
authority in Rome, a stern intellectual repres- 
sion within the papal Church, and savage 
reprisals, wherever they were possible, against 
those who had renounced the Papacy. 

In our own country, when the firm guidance 
of Henry VIII. was removed, there were two 
interludes of weakness and reaction; and then 
England entered upon a struggle of life and 
death with the militant and renovated Papal 
Court. We were battling for civil, political, 
and religious freedom, or even for our existence 
as an independent nation. The Papacy made 
war upon us, according to its new methods, for 
its new creed, for its confiscated income and its 
forfeited authority, and by means of its new 
instrument, the Society of Jesus. The battle on 
our side was directed by one of the greatest and 
most courageous of our sovereigns: the ministers 
whom she chose were worthy of herself, and of 
our cause. In Burghley and in Walsingham, the 
Jesuits, and even Parsons, their greatest Eng- 
lish representative, found opponents who could 
beat them at their own weapons; though Eliza- 
beth and her advisers never stooped to those 
criminal and dastardly methods which some 
agents of the Papacy allowed themselves to use. 
Walsingham baffled plots and spies by one of 
the most perfect organizations of a secret service 
that was ever known; but the Queen and her 


England and the Papacy. 71 


ministers did not resort to poison, to assassina- 
tion, or to the wiles of casuistry and equivo- 
cating. When it came to hard and open 
fighting, the sailors of Elizabeth swept her 
enemies from the sea. If the Armada carried 
the ambitions of Philip, the desires and _ bles- 
sings of the Papacy, the methods and machinery 
of the Inquisition, the fleets of Elizabeth bore 
the fortunes of the Reformation, of our national 
and imperial growth, of our coming freedom 
and progress; of that life and greatness which 
could not have been developed under obedience 
to Rome, which is irreconcilable with the spirit 
and methods of the Papacy as they were enun- 
ciated and organized by Trent. 

Of Edward the Sixth’s reign we need say 
only two things. One is, that advantage was 
taken of the King’s minority, by unscrupulous 
and greedy politicians, to advance themselves 
and their families under the pretext of religion, 
and of a more zealous reformation. The other 
is, that in spite of this favourable opportunity, 
no individual or sectarian reformer, whether 
English or foreign, was able to intrude his 
private opinions into the official utterances of 
our Church. 

The opposite reaction under Mary was due 
principally to the sympathies and feelings of 
the Queen herself; but also to the fears and 
uneasiness caused by the disturbance and mis- 
government of Edward’s reign. The orderly, 
quiet, and patriotic majority, who wanted stabi- 
lity and a reformed Catholicism, were alienated 
finally from all sympathy with a papal reaction 
or restoration by the greater violence and mis- 
government of Mary. This Queen was Spanish 
and not English, both in her nature and her 


72 England and the Papacy. 


sympathies. She made England a satellite of 
Spain, and reduced us to the lowest and weakest 
state politically which we have ever reached. 
She was possessed by a personal and petty 
rancour, for which there had been too much 
provocation during her soured and unhappy 
life; but, in conceding this to the woman, we 
necessarily condemn the Queen. She relied 
upon the Spaniards, instead of on her People, 
and she took naturally to Spanish methods. 
She would have given up much more to Spain, 
to the new Romanism of Trent, and to their 
arbitrary methods, if the Privy Council had not 
restrained her. The country would not endure 
any restitution of the monastic lands ; but Mary 
was allowed to restore the papal jurisdiction, 
as well as to revive and extend the laws against 
heretics. 

Between 1555 and 1558, at least three hundred 
persons were burnt in England, an average of 
about a hundred a year, or two a week. Our 
experience of the counter-reformation and its 
methods was short and slight. As many vic- 
tims, almost, have been displayed sometimes 
on a single Spanish holiday; and we never 
tolerated among us the injustice, the indignities, 
and the cruelties which were inflicted by the 
Spanish Inquisition upon its victims before they 
were finally dispatched. 

- The country, however, was sickened with 
blood; and Mary did England a real service by 
showing it the spirit and methods of that new 
Romanism which was established by the Coun- 
cil of Trent. The lesson thus learnt from the 
misuse of power by Romanized ecclesiastics was 
brought home to the country in another way, 
when the Papacy was deprived again of all 


England and the Papacy. Wa 


jurisdiction here, and tried to regain its influence 
by policy and plotting. The manceuvres of the 
Papacy and its accomplices against Elizabeth 
are even more odious and criminal than their ex- 


ploits against helpless and conscientious victims 
under Mary. 


CHAPTER Xie 


ELIZABETH’S BATTLE AGAINST THE PAPACY. 


LIZABETH resolved to be Queen of an 
united people, and not the leader of any 
faction or sect, especially in religion. She was 
entirely British in feeling, as in descent. Her 
patriotism and statesmanship were of the high- 
est order. Her courage was magnificent. She 
restored good government, security, and pros- 
perity at home. By the most skilful diplomacy, 
she maintained an outward peace with all her 
neighbours, and avoided an open war with 
Spain for almost thirty years. The Act of 
Supremacy was renewed when she succeeded ; 
and the Crown thus recovered its lawful and 
sovereign authority over all persons and all 
national affairs. The Act of Uniformity in 
Worship established the reformed Prayer-Book. 
Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical policy was accepted, 
more or less willingly, by a large majority of 
the nation. Out of nine thousand beneficed 
clergy, rather less than two hundred resigned, 
or were expelled for disobeying. The great body 
of the people were contented with the English 
and legal service in their parish churches ; or, 
at any rate, they submitted, and attended it. 
In those days, there was no rigid uniformity 
of service among the Churches in communion 
with Rome, and many local rites were used 


England and the Papacy. 75 


without question. The scrupulous minority, 
who held aloof, were not molested in their per- 
sons, so long as they could prove that they were 
peaceable and loyal subjects. Elizabeth wished, 
above all things, to heal the religious differences 
of her kingdom, and she relied on time as the 
great healer. For twelve years, her efforts were 
allowed to go on quietly and successfully. They 
were, indeed, so successful as to displease and 
alarm the Roman Court, which had no grievance 
against her, except that she would not allow the 
Pope to interfere either with our freedom in 
religion or with our choice of a sovereign. 
In 1570, therefore, Pius V. issued a Bull, 
excommunicating and deposing the Queen as 
an heretical usurper, releasing her subjects from 
their allegiance, excommunicating those who 
remained loyal, ordering those who accepted the 
Pope’s authority to carry out this his judgment, 
and forbidding them to attend the established 
worship. 

This was a declaration of open war; and 
the Popes were henceforth allies or instigators 
of all our foreign enemies in turn: of the 
Spaniards especially, of the House of Guise 
in France, of their descendant and tool Mary 
Stuart, and of the native Irish. The Popes and 
their agents intrigued as well with every element 
of disaffection and disorder within the kingdom. 

A small number of Englishmen accepted the 
Bull, so far as worship was concerned, and 
separated themselves from the national Church. 
By this proceeding, a schismatical popish sect or 
faction was inaugurated among us. In date, 
it is thus the second among recognized bodies 
of Nonconformists: the Independents taking 
precedence of the Romanists. In size, it is 


76 England and the Papacy. 


very much smaller now, relatively to the popu- 
lation and to other religious bodies, than it was 
under Elizabeth. 

This new papal sect was divided immediately 
into two main factions, with regard to political 
and national affairs. Its internal quarrels were 
more numerous and petty. They were also 
interminable, exceedingly bitter in spirit, as well 
as tyrannical and treacherous in method. 

One of these factions, the larger and worthier, 
was honestly religious and patriotic. Its ad- 
herents wished only to go their own way quietly, 
following their conscience in Church govern- 
ment, being in all other matters loyal to their 
Queen and country. These Romanists are 
worthy of all honour. They held to their faith, 
as they conceived it, heroically, through danger 
and much suffering. They maintained their 
loyalty, and proved it abundantly, in spite of 
grievous ill-usage and provocation. They repre- 
sented the traditional, though erroneous, Catho- 
licism which had prevailed in England between 
the fourth Lateran Council and the conservative 
Church legislation of Henry VIII., and which 
as a living system of theology had passed away 
from us for ever. It was overwhelmed, on one 
side, by that revived and reformed national 
Catholicism which the New Learning had pro- 
duced: on the other side, it was undermined 
and supplanted by the narrowed, centralized, 
and more definite Romanism of Trent. 

A revived patriotic and national Catholicism, 
which we owe chiefly to the wisdom and courage 
of Elizabeth, and the political, violent, sec- 
tarian papalism, which the Jesuits organized and 
manipulated, were thus brought into active con- 
flict with one another; and their irreconcilable 


England and the Papacy. Re 


differences ended that compromise between pa- 
triotism and Popery, between the Royal Supre- 
macy and the papal claims, which had satisfied 
our medizval ancestors. The political, national, 
and ecclesiastical forces which were brought 
into open and irreconcilable hostility, by refor- 
mation and reaction, by the New Learning and 
obscurantism, by the claims of knowledge and 
of liberty against a corrupt and usurped autho- 
rity, left no place or function for those who 
represented, and still desired, the old spirit of 
medieval freedom and compromise. Their 
sufferings were piteous, but they were as inevit- 
able as they were undeserved. Their troubles 
were due chiefly to the political temper and 
the criminal methods of the more violent papal 
agents, who obeyed the Roman Court, who 
represented the methods and spirit of modern 
Romanism. 

These extremists, led and misguided by the 
Jesuits, were violently and actively hostile to 
Elizabeth’s person and policy. The Queen was 
described by these men as ‘‘the usurper who 
now occupies the kingdom.” They acknow- 
ledged the Pope’s right to depose English 
sovereigns, chosen lawfully and constitutionally 
by the nation; and to dispose of the succession 
according to his political and sectarian interests. 

In these matters, the old school of English 
Romanists, like More and Gardiner, were tho- 
roughly sound and constitutional. The Jesuit 
leader, Parsons, on the other hand, writes of 
‘‘the Pope, who, besides the universal power 
given to him by God for defending religion, has 
a particular right of majesty, and supreme 
dominion in England.” In other words, Parsons 
accepted the spiritual claims of the Papacy, with 


78 England and the Papacy. 


all their consequences, as well as those temporal 
and feudal claims upon the Crown of England 
which were based upon John’s homage and sur- 
render. Parsons and his adherents were eager 
to carry out the Pope’s intentions, and to make 
the Bull of Pius V. an effectual weapon. He 
and his agents were in sympathy with all our 
foreign enemies, and especially with Spain. 
They fomented rebellion and discontent within 
the kingdom. They intrigued with every claim- 
ant to the throne; and, as we can see now by 
their own correspondence, they used and duped 
them all in turn. 

The chief object of the Jesuits was to be on 
the winning side, and to make the best use of 
events for the advantage and domination of their 
Society. The famous Pere La Chaise, writing 
to Father Petre in 1688, says that Aquaviva, 
the General of the Jesuits, allowed Parsons to 
support the claims of King Philip; and another 
agent, Creighton, to support the succession of 
King James VI.; ‘‘so that the Society should 
be on the winning side whether James or Philip 
won. 

Parsons has been flattered in a modern Jesuit 
publication as ‘‘animated throughout by sincere 
patriotism ;” but, from his writings and policy, 
we can only understand his ‘‘ patriotism” as a 
desire to subject England to the papal religion 
and authority. He seems to have disliked any 
true political or civil freedom, and to have 
ignored the question of our national indepen- 
dence. From his own point of view, he was 
right. He acted logically from his premisses. 
He was far more logical and loyal in his reason- 
ing than those who shrink from the full applica- 
tion of the papal theory, or who deny the natural 


England and the Papacy. 79 


results of it. Unfortunately, he was thoroughly 
disloyal and unscrupulous in his methods. 

Parsons appears to have been indifferent to 
the succession, so long as the interests of the 
Papacy and of his own Society were served. 
“Right,” he says, ‘‘is the least important ele- 
ment in the claim;” and he probably thought 
even less of the rights, interests, and constitu- 
tional wishes of the nation than of the supposed 
hereditary rights of any claimant. He lived and 
laboured for the purpose of ‘‘ reducing England 
again to the Church,” that is to the Pope, and 
to his Spanish masters ; and he was quite willing 
to accept a Spanish sovereignty as the instru- 
ment of this reduction. In his ‘‘ Memorial for 
the Reformation of England,” he advocates the 
restoration of the monastic lands, not however to 
the original Orders which had owned them, but 
to a council of ‘‘ principal bishops and prelates 
and others most fit for the purpose.’ These others 
were, it would seem, the Jesuits; who were to 
handle the Church revenues, to direct the 
prelates, and to monopolise clerical and secular 
education. The Council devised by Parsons 
was to be, really, the Inquisition; though not 
called so openly, as its title ‘‘ may be somewhat 
odious and offending at the beginning.” 

Parsons thus aimed at a stronger and more 
complete application of the methods and policy 
of Queen Mary, ‘‘of good memory;” under the 
Spaniards if necessary, in any case under the 
Jesuits, and according to the newest papal 
fashions of vengeance and repression. The 
political method of Parsons, the spirit and 
procedure of the Jesuits, or indeed of that 
new papalism which they represented, were 
abhorrent to the old-fashioned English Roman- 


80 England and the Papacy. 


ists, both to ecclesiastics and to laymen. ‘‘ The 
old Marian priests, as a body, were somewhat 
suspicious of the new men. What they had 
learnt of them from the seminary priests (now 
some fourscore or more) who had come to 
work in England, made them apprehensive of 
danger. The ways and ideas of the Society 
were so different from anything hitherto seen 
in England; and then, besides, there was more 
than a feeling that their coming had some 
political meaning which would only bring more 
trouble and persecution on the already sorely 
tried! flock? * 

This was undoubtedly the feeling of the older 
clergy, who were thoroughly English in senti- 
ment and education. This patriotic and loyal 
feeling was shared by the majority of Roman 
Catholic laymen, who were stirred up to dis- 
loyalty, if possible, by the Jesuits and their 
agents, or were persecuted by them if they held 
aloof from political and disloyal methods. The 
Jesuit Tichborne writes of a patriotic layman : 
‘¢Sir Thomas Tresham, as a friend of the State, 
is holden among us for an atheist, and all others 
of his humour either so or worse.’”’+ 

The violent party hesitated at nothing which 
might rid them of Elizabeth. Some of the 
Popes themselves possibly, King Philip, the 
Duke of Guise, several cardinals and nuncios 
and bishops, certainly, and various Jesuits, were 
all implicated in more than one plot to assassi- 
nate the Queen. There were innumerable plots 
devised or attempted against her life, between 


* Taunton: ‘‘ History of the Jesuits in England,” p. 55. 


+ Law: ‘‘ Conflicts between Jesuits and Seculars in the reign of 
Elizabeth.” 


England and the Papacy. 81 


1570 and 1603; some of them were certainly 
fictitious, but others were as certainly genuine. 
The methods of Parsons and his accomplices 
were wholly unscrupulous, un-English, criminal, 
and cowardly. These conspirators did not 
shrink from poison and assassination. Some of 
the Jesuit theologians defended regicide ; and 
we find their teachings carried into practice by 
weak-headed and fanatical partizans. Withina 
few years, two kings of France and the heroic 
Prince of Orange were murdered by such 
instruments as these. 

From all these methods and designs, the 
secular clergy, the Benedictines, and the great 
body of English Romanists stood honourably 
aloof. They made no concession to the Govern- 
ment about their beliefs, but their attitude was 
constitutional and loyal. They obeyed the 
Sovereign who was recognized by Parliament. 
They held that no foreign potentate had any voice 
in the choosing of our rulers, or any right of 
interference in our domestic and temporal affairs. 
They were loyal both to the old creeds of the 
Church, and to the State. Most of them were 
willing to resist even the Pope himself in any 
warlike and political attempt against the Queen 
or the Realm. Unfortunately, these notions did 
not prevail among the more active and leading 
Romanists ; and those who held them had to 
suffer in the inevitable struggle between the 
new, militant Romanism and the maintenance 
of our rights to political, national, and spiritual 
freedom, as those rights were then practised and 
understood. 

These were the problems which confronted 
Elizabeth ; and, it must be owned, the situation 
was distressing and difficult. In spite of the 


6 


82 England and the Papacy. 


violent and unscrupulous methods of the leading 
papal agents, Elizabeth’s advisers were exceed- 
ingly mild and patient. From the publication 
of the Bull, in 1570, to the year 1581, only three 
Romanists are claimed by Challoner as martyrs 
under the penal statutes. We can add the 
names of four others, who were executed for 
criminal and treasonable acts. The penal sta- 
tutes themselves, at any rate so far as the death 
penalty was concerned, were far more rigorous 
in expression than in execution. 

From 1581 to the destruction of the Armada, 
Elizabeth was fighting desperately for her life 
and throne, as well as for the liberty of 
England, against the Spaniards and the Pope. 
These enemies and their agents, especially the 
Jesuits, and the Seminary priests who were 
trained or influenced by them, grew more 
treacherous and active. Of these, as Parsons 
tells us in 1584, there were at least three hundred 
in England, and two hundred more at Rheims 
waiting to come over: a body of spies and 
incendiaries amounting to five hundred men. 
Of the Seminaries, especially of those estab- 
lished by Parsons in Spain, Cardinal d’Ossat 
wrote, ‘‘ The object of these institutions is to 
instil into the minds of the missionaries the 
Spanish political creed; and for that, rather 
than the Catholic faith, were they, if necessary, 
to suffer martyrdom.”* 

Throughout the reigns of Charles V. and 
Philip II., the Papacy was dominated by Spain, 
and was infected by Spanish methods of govern- 
ment and policy. Clement VII., as we have 
seen in the matter of Queen Katharine’s divorce, 


* Taunton: ‘‘ History of the Jesuits in England,” p. 134. 


England and the Papacy. 83 


was a tool and partizan of Charles V. The 
following Popes, until the rise of Louis XIV., 
were, as Archbishop Bancroft described them, 
‘‘Chaplains to the King of Spain.” The Jesuits, 
we must remember, were of Spanish origin, and 
they came into power while Spain dominated 
the Papacy. It was the object of Parsons that 
the new Romanist clergy in England should be 
‘‘hispaniolated;” that is, made into adherents 
of Philip; though Philip himself was often an- 
noyed and injured in his diplomacy by the 
meddling of his Jesuit allies. It is impossible 
to separate the political from the theological ele- 
ment in these missionaries and pseudo-martyrs. 
Indeed, as Cardinal d’Ossat puts it, so clearly 
and honestly, the ‘‘ political creed” of these 
emisSaries waS more important to their em- 
ployers than the ‘‘ Catholic faith;” and there- 
fore it is difficult to see where martyrdom, 
properly speaking, comes in. 

As all these matters were understood clearly 
by the Government of Elizabeth, it is also diffi- 
cult to see how they could have acted otherwise 
than they did, without betraying the highest 
interests of the nation. They never allowed 
religious phrases and pretexts to blind them to 
the political methods, aims, and nature of their 
Italian enemy and his Spanish masters. 

The feeling of the nation ran high, in the 
face of these dangers and conspiracies. It was 
wholly in favour of the Queen; and, in 1584, a 
national association was formed to protect her 
from assassins, or to avenge her death. Mary 
Stuart, the cause or the pretext of continual and 
criminal intrigues, was more closely watched. 
The detection of Babington’s conspiracy, in 1586, 
was followed by Mary’s trial and condemnation; 


6—2 


84 England and the Papacy. 


and she was beheaded the following year, when 
the Spanish invasion was expected immediately, 
and when her presence would certainly have 
been dangerous to the State. 

It must be remembered that Mary was deposed 
and expelled by her own people: that Elizabeth 
disliked those proceedings, and tried honestly 
to save Mary from the consequences of her 
follies and misgovernment in Scotland. Mary 
then began a new career as claimant or next 
heir to Elizabeth’s crown. She was not content 
to wait for the succession, and she pretended toa 
sounder title than Elizabeth. How far she was 
involved personally in conspiracies is a debatable 
question ; that she was involved to some extent 
is proved abundantly. There is no doubt also 
that her name, her cause, and her religion were 
made use of by other conspirators. It was 
equally impossible for Elizabeth to leave her 
free in England, or to let her go out of the 
country. It would have been even more 
perilous for Elizabeth to acknowledge Mary as 
her successor. 

Mary herself was persuaded to disinherit 
James, ‘‘considering the great obstinacy of my 
son in his heresy ;”” and she made over her title 
to the King of Spain. The succession of Philip 
was more promising for the designs of Parsons 
and the Jesuits; and they regarded the death of 
the unfortunate ex-Queen of Scotland as a gain 
to their policy, and a removal of many compli- 
cations. Olivarez, the Spanish minister, wrote : 
‘‘They (Parsons and Allen) do their best to 
convince me that it is not only no loss, but that 
by her death many difficulties had disappeared 
which could only have been removed with great 
labour while the enterprise was proceeding and 


England and the Papacy. 85 


with still greater trouble after our Lord had 
given it success.” * 

Thus was Mary regarded by those for whom 
she sacrified everything ; who sacrificed her life 
and fortunes unscrupulously to attain, if _pos- 
sible, their own designs. Her principles of 
government, her proved incompetence, her reli- 
gion, and above all her subjection to those who 
exploited her religion, would have made her 
succession to the Crown a cause of danger, of 
disturbance, and probably of disaster. Mary 
certainly knew of Babington’s conspiracy, and 
the King of Spain approved it. He wrote: 
‘« The affair is so much in God’s service that it 
certainly deserves to be supported, and we must 
hope that our Lord will prosper it, unless our 
sins be an impediment thereto.” Moreover, 
the Nuncio in Paris, a bishop, wrote to a car- 
dinal, nephew of Gregory XIII., that the Dukes 
of Guise and Mayenne, in the interests of Mary 
Stuart, ‘‘have a plan for killing the Queen of 
England, by the hand of a Catholic, though not 
one outwardly, who is near her person.” This 
man, or his heir, was to have 100,000 crowns, 
of which 50,000 were deposited with the Arch- 
bishop of Glasgow. The Nuncio added: ‘‘ As 
to putting to death that wicked woman, I said 
to him [the Duke of Guise] that I will not write 
about it to our Lord the Pope (nor do I), nor tell 
your most illustrious Lordship to inform him of 
it; because, though I know our Lord the Pope 
would be glad that God should punish in any 
way whatever that enemy of His, still it would 
be unfitting that His Vicar should procure it 
by these means.” 


* Taunton: ‘‘ History of the Jesuits in England,” page 125. 
+ Martin Hume: ‘‘ Philip II. of Spain,” page 201. 


86 England and the Papacy. 


The failure of Babington’s conspiracy, and 
the execution of Mary which was caused by it, 
were followed in 1588 by the sailing of the 
Armada. Before it started, Sixtus V. issued 
a new Bull, in which he proclaimed a crusade 
against Elizabeth and England. He sent his 
benediction to the Spanish invaders, as Alex- 
ander II. had to the Normans. As the Legate, ~ 
Cardinal Allen, wrote to the English Romanists : 
‘His Holiness confirms and renews the sen- 
tence of his predecessors against Elizabeth. He 
discharges you of your oath of allegiance. He 
expects all of you, according to your ability, to 
hold yourselves ready on the arrival of his 
Catholic Majesty’s powers to join them. This 
if you do, your lands and goods will be assured 
to you.” 

Fortunately, the English Romanists were not 
exposed to the doubts and temptations which 
might have been caused by a Spanish landing, 
or a Spanish victory. They showed themselves 
loyal and patriotic in rallying to the Queen, 
and in preparing to resist invasion. Neverthe- 
less, the head of their Church advised and 
ordered disloyalty, he aided our enemies with 
money and spiritual weapons. His Legate 
described the Queen in words of unpardonable 
grossness and scurrility. Parsons and his fac- 
tion were engaged actively on the side of 
Philip. They were prepared to carry out the 
Bull of Sixtus, and to subject their country to a 
foreign power. They did their utmost to rouse 
the English Papists, and to tamper with their 
loyalty. They were not successful with the 
great body of English Roman Catholics. They 
did corrupt afew unhappy individuals. For 
instance, in 1587, Sir William Stanley, who 


England and the Papacy. 87 


held the fortress of Deventer for Elizabeth, 
betrayed his trust and his troops by handing the 
place over to the Spaniards. Parsons proved 
his ‘‘ patriotism ” by writing a treatise in defence 
and praise of this foul treason. He also wrote 
a treasonable and scurrilous book against 
Elizabeth, as a preparation for the Armada, 
in which he defends the papal sentence, and 
describes her as ‘‘the Usurper and pretended 
Queen.” 

During all these dangerous and stormy years, 
from 1570 onwards, defensive measures were 
necessarily more frequent and severe; but, 
considering the length and fierceness of the 
struggle, the vile methods of the enemy, and 
the outrageous provocation, Elizabeth executed 
very few Papists throughout the forty-five years 
of her reign. The whole number of deaths in 
prison and on the scaffold ‘‘ after the accession 
of Elizabeth,” that is from 1558 to 1691, is 
given by Mr. Law, in his ‘‘ Calendar of English 
Martyrs,” as two hundred and sixty: a number 
considerably less than that of the executions 
during the three fiery years of Mary. We must 
remember the grave poli ical troubles and dan- 
gers which prevailed among us during that long 
period. It includes the great battle of Elizabeth ; 
the desperate and alarming episode of the 
Gunpowder Plot; the troubles and violences of 
Charles I., and of Cromwell; the insidious 
plottings under Charles II.; the undisguised, 
but stupid, lawlessness and tyranny of James ; 
the anxious period of the Revolution, and of the 
Jacobite conspiracies which followed it. Abroad, 
we have to remember the theological civil wars 
and massacres in France; the wars and mur- 
derings in Holland; the Thirty Years War in 


88 England and the Papacy. 


Germany, with all its horrors; the crimes and 
intrigues of the Catholic Reaction in Poland 
and various parts of Austria; the repression of 
all political and intellectual health in Italy ; the 
revolting cruelties or ‘‘devildoms” of Spain. 

Compared with these stupendous crimes 
against human life, liberty, and progress, all 
committed in the interests of the Papacy, and 
many of them by the instrumentality of the 
Jesuits, the punishment inflicted upon the 
adherents of the Papacy in England is very 
small. To the 260 deaths between 1558 and 
1691, we must add 82 executions of Romanists 
under Henry VIII.; making a total of 342 
during a hundred and fifty years. Those who 
were executed after the accession of Elizabeth 
cannot be claimed fairly, without qualification, 
as martyrs for religion. Some were guilty of 
active treason. All of them were allied with open 
enemies of the State in a time of rebellion and war. 

The active and responsible agents of the 
Papacy, whenever they were caught, professed 
their loyalty, and protested they had nothing to 
do with politics. These professions and protests 
were, naturally, held to be incredible and worth- 
less, so long as the Bulls of Pius and Sixtus, 
which set up a state of war, which challenged the 
rights and liberties of the nation, which attacked 
the person and denied the title of the Sovereign, 
were not repudiated or cancelled. Merely to 
suspend the operation of the Bull was not an 
evidence of peace. These papal Bulls, and the 
Jesuit methods of propagating the Roman faith, 
that is ‘‘the Spanish political creed,” were 
really answerable for the death of every Papist 
who suffered under Elizabeth, after the Bull of 
1570 was published. 


England and the Papacy. 89 


We may distinguish clearly, now, between 
the political agents of the Roman Court and 
those other Romanists, their dupes and victims, 
whose piety they mis-used; who dwelt among 
us peaceably, or who came among us honestly 
as missionaries. We may pity these emissaries 
of the gospel, as they imagined themselves to 
be: we may admire those who received and 
harboured them, as religious teachers; but it 
was impossible for the Government of Elizabeth 
to make any such distinction. It was forced to 
act as all governments must act in a time of war. 
The innocent have to suffer with and for the 
guilty. The Papacy chose to assail us by war- 
like and treacherous methods, using the carnal 
weapons of politics, and the unlawful shifts of 
casuistry. All the adherents of the Papacy had 
to risk the consequences that followed, naturally 
and inevitably, from these methods of attack. 

The apologists and defenders of the Papacy 
have no right to ignore these elements in the 
question, when they present their case. The 
consequences of the Jesuitical and _ political 
methods of trying to ‘‘reduce” England re- 
coiled, unfortunately, upon many loyal and 
moderate Romanists: not so much by bringing 
them to the scaffold, as by making their lives 
uneasy, by impoverishing their estates, and in 
some cases by dispersing their families and 
breaking up their homes. The loyalty and 
patriotism of these victims were often beyond all 
praise. They deserved a better cause, a more 
spiritual faith, and worthier guides. Their chief 
misfortune was that they accepted a political 
organization for a Church, and its intriguing or 
ambitious leaders for ministers of religion. 
They failed to see that the political methods of 


90 England and the Papacy. 


the Curia were incompatible with Christianity, 
and that its principles are irreconcilable with 
patriotism and civic liberty. 

Besides the Romanist laity and the survivors 
of the ancient clergy, there was another class of 
men whose fate we must consider. Of these, 
the Jesuits Campion and Walpole are typical 
examples. They were both enthusiasts, honest ac- 
cording to their lights, burning with zeal for their 
convictions, blindly obedient to their Superiors; 
of whose real designs and methods we can, per- 
haps, assume that they were wholly or partially 
ignorant. How far their ignorance was culpable 
or invincible is a dubious question, upon which 
we need not enter; but we can only acquit their 
intentions at the expense of their understandings. 
Campion’s ending was far more heroic than 
Walpole’s. Campion entered upon the English 
mission with Parsons, who was his Superior. 
He was caught, tried, condemned, and executed. 
Personally, he may not have been implicated in 
the methods and conspiracies of Parsons. We 
must hold, nevertheless, that he was morally 
and legally responsible for the undoubtedly 
treasonable designs and ways of his Superior, 
and for everything that was necessarily involved 
in furthering the papal cause while the Papacy 
was stirring up wars against the State and con- 
spiracies against the Queen. Campion wrote an 
address to the Council, as an apology for him- 
self and his labours, in which he set forth the 
Spiritual and non-political nature of his mission. 
In the fourth clause, he says: ‘I never had 
mind, and am straitly forbid by our fathers that 
sent me, to deal in any respects with matters of 
State or policy of this realm, as those things 
which appertain not to my vocation, and from 


England and the Papacy. gI 


which I do gladly estrange and sequester my 
thoughts.” 

As to this, we must hold either that Campion 
equivocated, which is difficult and shocking to 
believe ; or that he, personally, was forbidden 
to deal with politics; or that Parsons and the 
Superiors in Rome kept him unfairly in the 
dark; or that the designs and methods of 
Parsons were not precisely those of the Superiors 
in Rome: in other words, that he practised 
‘economy ” with them, as with everyone else. 
Of this, there is sufficient proof in his own 
writings. 

Whatever the solution, whatever the nature or 
motive of Campion’s assertion, it could not pos- 
sibly be accepted by the Government as a plea 
of innocence. In the second clause, Campion 
had written: ‘‘ At the voice of our General Pro- 
vost, which is to me a warrant from heaven and 
an oracle of Christ, I took my voyage . . . from 
Rome to England.” Any man in those days 
who took the voice of the Papacy, expressed 
through any of its agents, especially through 
the Jesuit Superiors, as ‘‘a warrant from heaven 
and an oracle of Christ,”” was bound to be mis- 
trusted by the English Government, and held to 
be both an enemy and a dangerous conspirator. 
Against this general and unreserved admission 
of blind obedience, no assertion of personal 
innocence could be of any value or credibility. 
The Bull of Pius V. was sufficient of itself to 
stultify any active agent of the Papacy in Eng- 
land. In addition to this, the Government was 
thoroughly well informed about the political 
designs and methods of Parsons and his em- 
ployers. They were never deceived about the 
men and methods with which they had to deal. 


92 England and the Papacy. 


When Campion was asked at his examination 
‘‘whether he doeth at the present acknowledge 
Her Majesty to be a true and lawful Queen, or a 
pretensed Queen, and deprived, and in posses- 
sion of her crown only de facto?” he answered 
that ‘‘this question dependeth upon the fact of 
Pius Quintus, whereof he is not to judge, and 
therefore refuseth further to answer.” 

No Government could possibly accept such an 
answer as a proof of loyalty, or as anything but 
a challenge to its own authority and rights. 
Campion was, therefore, charged in that he did 
‘“at Rome and Reims, and in diverse other 
places, in parts beyond the seas, falsely, mali- 
ciously, and traitorously conspire, imagine, con- 
trive, and compass, not only to deprive, cast 
down, and disinherit the said Queen from her 
regal state, title, power, and rule of her realm of 
England, but also to bring and put the same 
Queen to death and final destruction, and to 
excite, raise, and make sedition in the said 
realm.” He was charged also with intending 
to alter the government of the realm, and the 
establishment of religion ; as well as with induc- 
ing ‘‘divers strangers and aliens” to invade the 
realm and make war against the Queen. On 
all these charges, Campion was found guilty. 
With the knowledge at the disposal of the 
Government, there could be no other verdict. 
The sentence is justified completely by the docu- 
ments at our disposal, and especially by the 
writings of those for whom Campion was work- 
ing, however blindly. His defence was that 
“if our religion do make us traitors, we are 
worthy to be condemned.” 

Campion may not have been personally or 
knowingly a traitor; but it was precisely his 


England and the Papacy. 93 


‘*religion,” as he was deceived in it, that is 
‘«the Spanish political creed” of his employers, 
which made him first the tool, and then the 
victim, of Englishmen who certainly were 
treasonable, and of foreigners with whom we 
were at war. ‘‘It was they who fastened round 
his neck the fatal cord, and gave the Govern- 
ment some grounds, at least, to suspect his 
complicity in treasonable attempts. His very 
death was used by his friends as a furtherance 
to their endeavours to subjugate England to 
a foreign Power; and while using other and 
unworthy means to bring about the conversion 
of England, took credit to themselves for Cam- 
pion’s apostolical spirit and steadfastness.”* 

The political Jesuits, like Parsons, covered 
their own evil designs and made their own 
profit out of the genuine piety and zeal of dupes 
like Campion. In this way, the Jesuits manage 
to possess the wisdom of the serpent, and to 
profess the nature of the dove: by dividing those 
qualities among different persons; appropriating 
the virtues of some individuals for the benefit 
and reputation of the whole Society ; ignoring 
all that is dubious and bad in other individuals, 
and attempting to conceal it under the blindness 
of the ignorant. This combination can hardly 
have been intended by the Master. By such 
methods, the moral law can be evaded, and the 
Sermon on the Mount explained away. 

It was impossible for Campion himself, it 
was impossible for the Government of Elizabeth, 
it is equally impossible for an historian, to dis- 
entangle the ‘‘ religion” of subordinate Jesuits 
from the politics and practices of those Superiors 


* Taunton: ‘‘ History of the Jesuits in England,” pp. 83-4. 


94 England and the Papacy. 


to whom they acknowledged a blind obedience ; 
making themselves, according to their principles, 
‘‘like a staff in a man’s hand,” or ‘‘as a corpse” 
in the hands of living men. 

To regard the orders of the Papacy ‘‘as a 
warrant from heaven and as an oracle of Christ ;” 
to be certain about the Pope’s authority, and to 
be uncertain about the Queen’s right and title ; 
could not be accepted in those days as a satis- 
factory and sufficient proof of loyalty. More- 
over, when the Pope had verbally deposed 
the Queen, roused her subjects so far as he 
could against her, and engaged in active war- 
fare against the realm, those Englishmen who 
favoured the papal cause, and acknowledged the 
Pope’s authority, could not escape being re- 
garded by the Government as agents of an 
enemy who was in arms against us. Father 
Southwell was condemned under an Act which 
ordained that all English subjects, born after 
Elizabeth’s accession, who took Roman Orders, 
and who entered into and remained within the 
realm, were traitors, and were to suffer the 
penalties of treason. After the Bull of Pius V., 
and while the Papacy was at war with our 
Government, it is impossible, without ignoring 
the most essential facts, to maintain that such 
persons were ‘‘condemned for the mere crime 
of Catholic priesthood.” Under the circum- 
stances which prevailed in England from 1570 
and onwards, a complete acknowledgment of the 
papal authority and claims was incompatible 
with true obedience to the civil power. 

The suspicions and perplexities of the Govern- 
ment, in every single case, were aggravated 
by those methods of equivocation to which the 
Jesuits and their pupils had recourse. The 


England and the Papacy. 95 


noterious Garnett, for instance, swore, ‘‘ upon 
his priesthood,” that he had not written a certain 
letter. The letter was intercepted, and shown 
to him: whereupon he said, ‘‘He had done 
nothing but that he might lawfully do ;” adding 
coolly that it was ‘‘evil done” of his judges to 
ask him, when they had the letters. ‘‘ To these 
and similar avowals, I ascribe his execution,” 
Lingard writes with his invariable honesty. It 
was, indeed, impossible for Garnett’s judges 
to believe anything he said. Tresham, his 
accomplice, and his pupil in equivocation, first 
owned that Garnett knew of the Powder Plot: 
then he retracted, and said he had only con- 
fessed this ‘‘to avoid ill usage;” and he 
added, ‘‘upon his salvation,” that he had not 
‘*seen Garnett for sixteen years.” Nevertheless, 
it was proved that Garnett and Tresham had 
been together constantly while the Plot was 
hatching, and even a few days before it was 
discovered. Garnett’s evidence was little better 
than a tissue of misleading words. Unfor- 
tunately for him, the Government had _ proofs 
that his evidence on oath was not trustworthy. 

These principles and practices were not pecu- 
liar to Garnett. They were allowed, and to a 
large extent devised, by members of his Society. 
Parsons was a master in these arts; and we 
find him practising them not only against the 
Queen’s Government, but against all those 
Romanists who opposed his schemes, and even 
in some cases against his Superiors and the 
Pope himself. Father Gerard protested in his 
examination that he acknowledged Elizabeth 
‘as the true Governor and Queen of England,” 
in spite of the excommunication. He added 
afterwards, to his friends, that in saying this he 


96 England and the Papacy. 


knew the operation of the sentence had been 
suspended, ‘‘ ¢2// such time as tts execution became 
possible.” Father Southwell held ‘‘that no man 
is bound to answer every man that asketh him 
unless he were a competent judge.” 

For those who accepted the Pope’s deposing 
sentence, it was easy and natural to argue, 
when it suited them, that none of Elizabeth’s 
judges were technically and legally competent. 
Such theories as these are practical anarchy : 
and Parsons went on to argue that heretical and 
apostate rulers, that is rulers who do not acknow- 
ledge the Pope, ‘‘fall at once from all power 
and dignity,” even before any sentence be passed 
against them ‘‘by the supreme pastor’ and 
judge.” 

More than this, there were Jesuit theologians 
who taught that ‘‘It is a probable opinion that 
it is no mortal sin to bring a false accusation 
for the sake of preserving our honour;” and 
what was probable to this writer was certain to 
Parsons, if we may judge by his correspon- 
dence and his methods of slandering opponents, 
especially the unfortunate Secular and Appellant 
clergy. Mariana, Bellarmine, and other theo- 
logians allowed: regicide and lauded those who 
practised it. Bellarmine says that ‘‘ Heretics 
condemned by the Church may be afflicted with 
temporal punishments and even death.” He 
only qualifies his opinion by adding, ‘‘if the 
Catholic party be the stronger.” In that case, 
might gives the full right to kill; just as, in 
the case of Elizabeth’s deposition, the sentence 
was ‘‘deferred” until it could be carried out. 
Bellarmine also argued in the case of Garnett 
and the Powder Plot, that ‘‘it was not lawful 
for him to declare a treasonable secret ‘to an 


England and the Papacy. 97 


heretical king, who had no reverence for the 
sacrament of confession, and who could have 
constrained him by torture to declare the person 
who had confessed the criminal design. Upon 
this Bishop Andrewes in his reply caustically 
remarks: ‘ Therefore it follows from this argu- 
ment that it is lawful and justifiable to blow up 
such a king with gunpowder ;’ and (he might 
have added) that fear of punishment is a suffi- 
cient excuse for disobeying the moral law.’’* 

It must be remembered that these extreme 
opinions were not professed by all the Jesuits, that 
they were denounced by the majority of English 
Romanists, and were condemned by ecclesias- 
tical authority. Nevertheless, they were held 
and acted on by some Jesuits. In spite of con- 
demnations, they prevailed; because censures 
were evaded, and objections were refined upon, 
by later casuists. In view of all these facts, the 
answer of the Jesuit emissaries to the English 
Romanists, when they first entered the country, 
and were accused of coming ‘‘for matters of 
State, not for religion,” is not worth very much 
as evidence of their real principles and inten- 
tions. We must judge of the denial by their 
practices, and by their acknowledged economy 
in the use of words and oaths, as well as by so 
much that is revealed to us in their corres- 
pondence. 

To the accusation of meddling in politics, 
‘“‘The Jesuits said they had only one answer 
to make. They made oath there and then 
before all the assembly that ‘their coming was 
only apostolical, to treat of matters of religion 
in truth and simplicity and to attend to the 


* Taunton: ‘ History of the Jesuits in England,” page 248. 


7 


98 England and the Papacy. 


gaining of souls, without any pretence or know- 
ledge of matters of State.’ In case they fell into 
the hands of the State they would defend 
themselves on oath, and challenge anyone to 
prove anything against them ; and if the matter 
went, as was likely, by mere conjecture, they 
would bring conjecture against conjecture, and 
probability against probability. They argued, 
if they were political agents they must be sent 
to Catholics; and what Catholics would listen 
to them, or give credence to what they said, if, 
after the solemn oath they had just taken, they 
were to be found dabbling in politics?”* To do 
the majority of English Romanists justice, they 
did not ‘‘listen to them.” Parsons was one 
of those who made this oath. We have seen 
how he understood his own words; how he and 
others like him acted upon them. 

The unfortunate English Romanists were 
most cruelly deceived and ill-used by Parsons 
and his accomplices. Into the details of that 
sordid quarrel we need not enter; though they 
must have influenced the Government con- 
siderably, and have helped it to understand the 
class of men with whom it had to deal in the 
Jesuits and the Seminary priests. The aim of 
Parsons was to get sole authority over all the 
Romanist clergy in England, and to manage all 
the funds raised by the English Papists. The 
resistance to these plans was great, and the 
quarrel extended to Rome, as well as to all the 
English colleges abroad. The calumnies, the 
equivocations, the treachery shown upon. all 
sides, and the tyranny exercised by Parsons 
upon all who thwarted him, form an interesting 


* Taunton: ‘* History of the Jesuits in England,” page 56. 


England and the Papacy. 99 


study in Roman methods, and are a strange 
example of quarrelling in the face of a common 
danger. 

So bitter were the Romanist factions, and so 
fatal were the ‘‘apostolical” methods of the 
Jesuits, that the old Marian clergy threatened 
at one time to hand over Parsons to the 
Government; and he was obliged to escape 
out of the country. At a later time, we find 
Parsons corresponding with Cecil, slandering 
and betraying his opponents to the English 
Government. One of these opponents, Watson, 
a Secular priest, was literally betrayed into the 
hands of the Government by Garnett, and 
executed for his share in the Bye Plot. These 
unedifying transactions were not calculated to 
make the English Government think better of 
the Pope and his devotees. 

Elizabeth and her advisers thus had to deal, 
not only with an enemy who made and fomented 
war against the realm, but with an impalpable 
enemy whose principles virtually destroyed the 
foundations of society and the fabric of civil 
government. No oath, no engagement, made 
by the Jesuits and their accomplices, could be 
received as binding; no evidence given by 
them could be believed. Their appeals to their 
Priesthood were not sacred to them, nor their 
declarations made with their dying breath. 
They utilized the confessional to encourage 
plotters, and they misused its privileges to 
shelter conspirators and traitors. They asserted 
the right of the Pope to depose heretical 
sovereigns, and of the Pope’s agents to murder 
them; and they shrunk from no methods of 
carrying these theories into practice. Individual 
Papists, even Jesuits, may have been innocent 


==2 


100 England and the Papacy. 


of all these opinions and practices; but the 
Government was forced, by those who were 
guilty, to act as though every Papist might 
hold these opinions, with all their consequences. 

Nevertheless, the state of Romanists in Eng- 
land was much better than we should imagine 
from many so-called ‘‘ Records” and other 
partizan accounts. We read of High Mass 
being celebrated with great pomp, and of large 
congregations being assembled for services and 
sermons. A pilgrimage was made openly and 
even ostentatiously to Holywell, near Flint, by 
thirty persons who started from Buckingham- 
shire. Priests were not hunted about con- 
tinually like vermin, and slain off-hand when 
they were caught. Their occupation and their 
residence were generally well known; and they 
were seldom disturbed unless the Government 
heard rumours of some definite plot, or had 
information about the movements of some noto- 
rious and dangerous conspirator. Many, even 
of these, were caught, and were sent out of the 
country unharmed, but with a warning not to 
enter it again. 

Elizabeth herself was appealed to as an arbi- 
trator by the Seculars in their conflict against 
the tyranny and tricks of Parsons. A deputa- 
tion of them appeared before her at Court, and 
begged for her good offices in Rome. ‘‘The 
results of the appellant controversy were un- 
doubtedly of national importance. The King- 
dom owed, perhaps, more than is generally 
admitted to the Appellant priests for the failure 
of the later Spanish attempts, and for the peace- 
ful accession of James. By their firm resistance 
to a policy of aggression and violence, and their 
known readiness to divulge any treasonable pro- 


England and the Papacy. 101 


jects, they thwarted the Spanish faction at every 
point. The views which they were the first to 
broach in opposition to the deposing power, and 
which ultimately prevailed among the [English] 
clergy in general, were at least indirectly a gain 
to the country on the side of liberty and peace.’ * 

When Elizabeth was dying, the Secular clergy 
signed a protestation of their loyalty to the 
Queen, which does honour both to their pa- 
triotism and to their religious integrity: ‘‘ For 
aS we are most ready to shed our blood in 
defence of her Majesty and our country, so we 
will rather lose our lives than infringe the lawful 
authority of Christ’s Catholic Church.” The 
signatories, in writing thus, were honest and 
patriotic. How far they were logical and clear- 
sighted is another question. Their declaration, 
as regards the Queen, cannot be reconciled with 
a full acceptance of the deposing Bull, or with 
an unreserved acknowledgment of the papal 
claims. 

In these matters, the principles and attitude of 
Parsons must be owned to be far more logical 
and consistent with the papal theory. That 
theory, if it be carried out, is, in reality, not 
consistent with nationalism, with patriotism, or 
with perfect allegiance to any civil power. 
Parsons, as we have seen, did not recognise 
any of these human claims and limitations. He 
could not be censured, by anyone who upholds 
the rights of conscience, if he had asserted his 
principles in an honourable way, and had ac- 
cepted their consequences in a Christian spirit ; 
as the Quakers did, with finer heroism, in their 
tremendous battle. Parsons chose, however, to 


* Law: ‘‘ Conflict of Jesuits aad Seculars.”’ 


102 England and the Papacy. 


do neither. He persuaded himself by sophistries 
to use methods and to encourage practices for 
which no defence is possible, which are equally 
destructive in the end to religion and to civil 
government, which are bound to corrupt social 
and individual morality. 

There is little difference, either in principle, in 
procedure, or in results, between the methods of 
Parsons and the methods of a modern anarchist. 
The ethics and casuistry of Parsons are, indeed, 
more deliberately and systematically corrupting. 
Even our own theories of toleration are not 
extended to anarchical principles and practices. 
We cannot fairly blame Elizabeth and her 
Government for dealing sternly with those who 
made war upon their country, and upon society 
itself, by such methods as Parsons used and 
sanctioned. We have not ourselves any remedy 
but force in dealing with such men and such 
principles. 

In the matter of toleration, we must remember 
that our standard was very different from the 
standard of the sixteenth century. No party, in 
those days, understood or really desired tolera- 
tion, in our meaning of the word. They all 
wanted supremacy, as a means of repressing the 
beliefs of others. The attempts at a partial 
toleration, as in France and Germany, probably 
caused in the end more suffering and bloodshed 
than they averted. Elizabeth’s expedient of a 
State Church, with a rigid exterior conformity, 
but with little interference about opinions, unless 
they resulted in disorderly or treasonable acts, 
was perhaps the best solution possible for the 
times and problems with which she had to deal. 
On the whole, she carried out her policy with 
great moderation, and with greater tact. She 


England and the Papacy. 103 


cannot be blamed for the mistakes of those who 
followed her, nor for the severity and caution 
with which she repressed extremists of every 
sort, Puritans as well as Papists. The extreme 
Papists, and their unlawful methods, are answer- 
able for the worst sufferings which befel the 
moderate English Romanists. 

Elizabeth’s policy must be judged finally by 
the greatness of her achievement; by the vast 
difference between the weak, disunited country 
she received from Mary, and the prosperous, 
contented, patriotic England she handed on to 
James. In no country, whether it went through 
a Reformation or through a more violent 
Catholic Reaction, was there so little bloodshed 
and suffering in the name of religion: and, we 
may add, no ruler, even in that stormy period, 
had graver difficulties to meet, or more dan- 
gerous, unscrupulous, and numerous enemies 
to overcome. She left her country stronger and 
more courageous than it had ever been. She 
gave her people faith in themselves and in their 
destinies; she indicated the lines which those 
destinies were to follow, and some of the 
methods by which they were to be fulfilled. 
‘Out of the forty years of struggle a potent 
empire had emerged, determined to choose its 
own form of faith, and able successfully to resist 
all dictation from the foreigner, even though its 
degenerate sovereign had forgotten the dignified 
traditions of Elizabeth.” * 


* Martin Hume: ‘‘ Treason and Plot.” 


CHAPTER.XILE 


THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION. 


HE great battle with Philip was really | 
ended by the defeat and wreck of the 
Armada. Elizabeth had not only saved her 
own country, but she proved to all Europe the 
weakness and incompetence of Spain. These 
truths, however, plain as they are to ourselves, 
as we look back, were not seen by many of the 
actors in those great events. The warlike policy 
of Philip was continued, after his defeat in 
1588 ; though a great deal more was planned 
and threatened by him than the Spanish re- 
sources could achieve. Parsons was his accom- 
plice and instigator in more than one projected 
invasion between 1589 and 1603. 

Elizabeth, it was evident, could not be dis- 
possessed by treason or rebellion. She had 
placed her ‘‘chiefest strength and safeguard,” 
under God, ‘‘in the loyal hearts and good will” 
of her subjects ; and she had earned the grati- 
tude of a ‘‘thankful people.” Nevertheless, the 
struggle for Roman Catholic ascendancy went 
on, and it was waged over the succession to the 
Crown. The Scotch and English Courts were 
seething with intrigues. James played with 
every party in turn, and made large promises 
to them all. Much was expected from him by 
the Romanists, and many hopes were built 


England and the Papacy. 105 


upon the sympathies of Anne of Denmark. 
James was, in reality, duped, used, and put 
aside by Parsons and his Jesuit agents, as Mary 
Stuart had been before. Both sovereigns and 
‘‘the Irish savages,” as Parsons described those 
who suffered much for him, were pawns in the 
great game of the Society; to ‘‘ be encouraged 
by some trifling help in money or arms.” 

The real hopes and policy of the Jesuits were 
all founded on a Spanish conquest, and on their 
subjugation of England by means of a Spanish 
or an hispaniolated ruler. The Jesuits plotted 
for this, ‘‘at the expense of England’s inde- 
pendence.” ‘‘ They carefully enmeshed Mary 
Stuart in the toils, until she had solemnly 
disinherited her son for heresy, and made 
Philip of Spain her heir.” Then they dissemi- 
nated throughout Europe the notion of Philip’s 
descent from John of Gaunt, so that he might 
claim the Crown himself, or hand on the claim 
to a tool who would be dependent on them- 
selves. There was to be no ‘‘huddling up,” as 
Parsons described it: his policy was to be 
““Thorough.” The monastic properties were to 
be disgorged, and placed under the control of 
the Society: ‘‘There was to be no _ political 
paltering with that question, as there had been in 
Mary’s time; and ‘some good, sound manner of 
Inquisition’ must be established. It is plain to 
see that the only Catholic England with which 
Parsons would be contented was one modelled 
on Catholic Spain :’* though, in the matter of 
an Inquisition he wavered between the Roman 
and Spanish models, or something between the 
two which might suit England better. His 


* Martin Hume: ‘‘ Treason and Plot.” 


106 England and the Papacy. 


notions, at any rate, were clear and logical, if 
we grant his premisses. Nothing less is honestly 
compatible with a complete submission to the 
claims and principles of the Papacy. 

To the papal claims and principles, both 
toleration and moderation are equally detestable 
and ridiculous. Father Tichborne rejoiced in 
what he describes as the ‘‘ persecutions” in 
England ; that is, the troubles forced upon the 
English Romanists by the methods of their 
violent and criminal representatives abroad. 
He dreaded, above all things, liberty of con- 
science, as leading probably to peace and 
settlement. This is a high tribute to the 
wisdom of Elizabeth’s policy and patriotism, as 
conceived at her accession, and only frustrated 
by the warlike methods of the Papacy and its 
unscrupulous representatives. 

Practically, however, the methods of Parsons 
were not workable. Whenever politics are 
obtruded into religious affairs, religion is made 
subservient to political necessities. Parsons 
and his Superiors had but one object, which is 
well summed up by Mr. Martin Hume. We 
may abhor some of the methods which they 
allowed to themselves in trying to attain it; 
but, assuming the honesty of their intentions, 
the object in itself, theoretically, was high and 
noble. Its defect is, that it ignored human 
nature, and practical affairs, and the imperfec- 
tions of all human agencies. It would have 
violated the inherent rights and necessities of 
men; and would have caused far more evil and 
misery than it aimed at curing. ‘* Dominion of 
the State was what they [the Jesuit faction] 
aimed at, in which the whole national life was 
to be bound up with and subjected to the sole 


England and the Papacy. 107 


over-lordship of Christ—of whom they were 
the officers. Kings, potentates, even Popes 
were to be dwarfed finally by the rule of Christ 
alone; and when Jesuits served kings, as they 
served Philip, it was only for the purpose of 
using his power to humble in the long run the 
caste to which he belonged. No doubt the 
Dominican order had similar dreams, with the 
Inquisition as its instrument in Spain, but the 
Secular sovereigns had been able to turn this 
great engine to their own ends. The Society 
of Jesus was founded on principles specially 
devised to prevent this in its own case; and it 
was perfectly consistent with those principles in 
utterly rejecting and opposing the efforts of the 
Secular and regular clergy to arrive at a modus 
vivena? in England which might leave the ques- 
tion of Catholic Supremacy in the country to be 
decided in the future.”’ 

In pursuance of this ideal, the Jesuits were 
ready to sacrifice everything which governed 
the affections and motives of other men. Father 
Creswell, for instance, wrote that he was ‘‘so 
free from personal or national bias in the 
matter, that if I heard that the entire destruc- 
tion of England was for the greater glory of 
God and the welfare of Christianity, I] should 
be glad of its being done.” 

These extreme theories, which are the logical 
conclusion from the papal premisses, ruined the 
papal cause in England, and weakened it every- 
where. In France, the League was defeated 
because it was seen to be unpatriotic and anti- 
national. In England, these principles made 
the Romanists feared and hated with a violence 
which requires neither explanation nor excuse. 
Even the great majority of English Romanists 


108 England and the Papacy. 


were alienated by the un-English methods and 
principles of the Jesuits, and by their advocacy 
of a Spanish sovereign. The Pope himself saw 
at last that Philip’s zeal for the Church was a 
cloak for Spanish aggrandisement. A similar 
reason always kept the French Government 
from joining with the Pope and the Spaniards 
in any serious hostilities against Elizabeth. 

All these mundane reasons and causes united 
in the end to bring about the succession of 
James the First. The Jesuits, in fact, mis- 
read English feeling completely, even among 
their co-religionists. The Romanist exiles were 
wholly out of touch with their countrymen at 
home, both Papists and Protestants. The 
Kings of Spain were misled by Parsons, and 
by all those dreamers and theorizers who 
ignored human nature, and practical affairs as 
they really were. 

Elizabeth was true to the end in her broad, 
moderate, and healing policy, so far as ex- 
tremists of either side allowed her to act freely. 
The narrower Puritans were as troublesome to 
her as the disloyal Papists. The Cecils always 
stood for a moderate and conciliating policy, 
both in religion and in foreign affairs, between 
two fanatical extremes. The intrigues and 
violence of the extreme Puritan politicians, such 
as Essex, only brought disaster and defeat upon 
their authors. The English Romanists, apart 
from the Spanish faction, hoped much from the 
accession of James. The majority would have 
been satisfied with a small measure of tolera- 
tion; and they would have been glad to pur- 
chase it, according to the French precedent, by 
the expulsion of the Jesuits, and a renunciation 
of all political attempts to restore their abused 


England and the Papacy. 109 


and forfeited supremacy. Such compromises 
were resisted by the Jesuits and their supporters. 
James had only too much reason to know how 
worthless and unreliable the engagements of 
this faction were ; and, as long as they had any 
influence over the English Papists, he was not 
able, however willing he might have been 
otherwise, to relax the penal statutes. 

The disappointment caused by this policy 
was, of course, utilized by the extremists ; and 
the results were the Main and the Bye Plots, 
and finally the Gunpowder Treason. This was 
followed by a new oath of allegiance, which 
was refused by all those English Papists who 
accepted the guidance of the Jesuits. The oath 
asserted the lawful right and title of King 
James. It repudiated the deposing power of 
the Pope, his right to make or to cause invasions, 
to release English subjects from their allegiance, 
and to stir up rebellion. A further clause was 
added, in which everyone taking the oath was 
made to swear that ‘‘I do from my heart abhor, 
detest, and abjure as impious and heretical this 
damnable doctrine and position; that Princes, 
which may be excommunicated or deprived by 
the Pope, may be deposed or murdered by their 
subjects, or any other whatsoever.” 

The papal claim to absolve from oaths, and 
all equivocation, mental evasion, or secret reser- 
vation in using and interpreting the words, were 
also repudiated. The spiritual authority of the 
Pope was not mentioned in this oath. No 
detail of the Christian faith, even in any pecu- 
liar Roman form of it, was censured. The oath 
was aimed only at certain temporal claims of 
the Papacy, which were clearly irreconcilable 
with patriotism and the rights of the civil 


PLO England and the Papacy. 


power. Bellarmine, however, pronounced that 
this oath could not be taken lawfully by Roman- 
ists; and, granting the papal authority and 
claims, he was right. Blackwell, the arch-priest, 
a tool of the Jesuits, held that it could be taken 
‘‘in present circumstances:” that is, he ad- 
mitted an equivocation, although those who 
accepted the oath swore to observe it ‘‘ according 
to the plain and common sense” of the words, 
and expressly repudiated equivocation. It was 
really hopeless to deal with people whose words 
and oaths could not be trusted ; who, according 
to their own principles and practice, could not 
be bound by any form of engagement. 

Parsons died in 1610. His ‘‘ continual viola- 
tions of truth and justice and honesty” are com- 
mented upon with great fairness and severity by 
Tierney, the Roman Catholic historian. These 
characteristics, as well as his despotic temper 
and unscrupulous methods, are plain enough 
even from his casual appearances in this sum- 
mary of Church affairs. He was undoubtedly 
the greatest of all the English Jesuits. In one 
point of view, he was the most honest, or at 
least the most consistent, because he had the 
logic and courage of his opinions. He never 
shrank from carrying out thoroughly, logically, 
to their utmost consequences, those principles 
which he understood so clearly, and accepted so 
unreservedly. We may condemn his methods, 
and abhor his notions of ‘‘ patriotism,” as ‘‘ The 
Month” describes his utter indifference to all the 
claims and rights of England. Nevertheless, 
as the principles of equivocation and assassina- 
tion were accepted by his Society, it is missing 
the point to blame him personally for doing what 
he believed was lawful; that is, for equivocating, 


England and the Papacy. Ta 


and tampering with schemes of murder. All 
our blame should be reserved for those prin- 
ciples and institutions which can so deceive men 
by sophistries and syllogisms, as to persuade 
them to outrage the evangelical and moral law. 

Parsons was a magnificent and typical Jesuit: 
a splendid personification of the principles of 
Popery. He caused untold misery and loss to 
his own sect and party in England. He did 
a great deal to strengthen that courage and 
patriotism which the reign of Elizabeth pro- 
duced. He stands out in history as a warning to 
Englishmen, by showing them how Jesuit ethics 
and papal theology work out in practice, when 
they are applied consistently. Everything that 
we abhor and condemn in Parsons follows natu- 
rally and logically from the system of Roman 
casuistry, and from accepting the papal claims 
as they have been continuously issued, asserted, 
and explained by the Popes themselves in their 
official utterances. Fortunately, the great bulk 
of Romanists are neither logical nor zealous. 
Parsons was both, in an eminent degree; and 
we should be very grateful to him, as one of the 
truest exponents of the papal system and prin- 
ciples. The most useful way of proving our 
gratitude is to take care that his example and 
teachings be neither forgotten nor misunder- 
stood. The memory of them is indispensable 
in forming an opinion about the Papacy; and 
an understanding of them will help us materially 
to decide upon our attitude towards the spirit, 
methods, and policy of the papal Court. 

Under Charles I., the majority of English 
Romanists sided, naturally, with the King, as 
against the Parliament; and, as we must own, 
the Irish Papists had as much right as the 


112 England and the Papacy. 


Scotch Presbyterians to get all the advantage 
they could out of our troubles. Some of the 
Jesuit faction, however, were not friendly to the 
Court. Their Spanish sympathies led them to 
dislike or to distrust Henrietta Maria. No 
doubt, they were pleased and filled with hope 
by the overthrow of the bishops, and the altera- 
tions in the national Church. Moreover, they 
played, as usual, to be on the winning side. 
Some of them, certainly, intrigued with the 
Puritan leaders. Parsons’ ‘‘ Book of the Suc- 
cession” enunciated doctrines which were very 
convenient to the deposers and executioners of 
Charles ; and parts of his volume were reprinted 
and circulated by order of Parliament. 

A Jesuit called Netterville ‘‘was on terms of 
great intimacy with Cromwell, often dining at 
his table and playing chess with him.” * These 
strange hospitalities occurred in Ireland, where 
the Jesuits appear to have intrigued against the 
Royalists, the Irish bishops, and the Nuncio. 
The latter says that ‘‘the Jesuits, as usual 
devoted to their own interests. have declared 
against us.” The Jesuits are accused of having 
betrayed and deserted Charles, and of having 
staked everything on Cromwell, hoping for 
‘‘oreat matters from him when he shall make 
himself King.” The readers and admirers of 
‘‘John Inglesant” will remember that this was 
the policy of the Jesuit, Hall, in Mr. Short- 
house’s masterly and accurate romance. 

Quarrels between the Jesuits and the other 
Romanists went on as usual under Charles II. 
Perhaps we may still find evidence which will 
throw more light upon the plots and counter- 


* Taunton: ‘‘ The Jesuits in England.” 


England and the Papacy. 113 


plots of that bewildering time. . For what is 
called ‘‘the Popish Plot,” twenty-six persons 
were executed, and four died in prison. Thirty 
were condemned, and then reprieved. The 
numbers of the Jesuits in England, during the 
civil war, are given at 335; and during a parti- 
cular year, namely, 1645, one of ‘‘ extreme need,” 
their revenue is calculated at £3,916 2s. 6d. ; 
worth, in current value, about £25,000. They 
had two noviciates, and they carried on other 
works and institutions, more or less publicly. 
Among their enterprises, had been a manufac- 
tory of soap, in Westminster. Their hopes and 
ambitions ran so high, when James succeeded, 
that they overshot the mark, ruining their patron 
and their own cause. 

James and his wife were crowned privately 
by a Roman ecclesiastic, and anointed with holy 
oil from Rheims. The Jesuits not only alarmed 
the Protestants, and alienated them from James, 
but they showed bitter and unwise hostility to 
other Orders, and to all Romanists who were 
not of their own faction. As a Romanist com- 
plains, the Jesuits ‘‘have ten thousand mouths 
beside their own to open against any person 
whom interest or passion persuade them to 
persecute.”* The Jesuits, in fact, made a last 
effort to carry out Parsons’ ‘‘ Memorial for the 
Reformation of England.” James put himself 
blindly into their hands, against the advice of 
wiser Romanists, and of the Pope himself. 
When Innocent XI. refused a cardinal’s hat 
to Father Petre, James was instructed -by his 
Jesuit advisers to say that ‘‘he could be a good 
Roman Catholic and yet separate himself from 
the Court of Rome.” 


* Quoted by Taunton: ‘‘ The Jesuits in England.” 
8 


114 England and the Papacy. 


The King intruded Romanists into offices of 
authority and trust, both in the public service, 
in the university, and in the army. For these 
purposes, he was obliged to over-ride the law, 
by asserting and exercising a dispensing power. 
If this claim had been allowed, there would 
have been no limit to his autocracy. Some 
of the bishops, in spite of their extravagant 
loyalty and their theories of Divine Right, were 
patriotic enough to resist the dispensing claim; 
and their attitude brought on that Revolution 
which they were not all so consistent in support- 
ing. It is almost incomprehensible to us that 
the Non-Jurors could not distinguish between 
their loyalty to the Crown, and their oaths to a 
person who had forfeited it by breaking all his 
own engagements. 

The Protestant Nonconformists, to their great 
honour, refused the King’s offers of toleration ; 
not merely, as is too often asserted, because the 
Popish Dissenters were included in the benefit, 
but because the grant of Toleration was illegal, 
since it depended on the King’s arbitrary dispen- 
sation, and not upon a lawful measure obtained 
through Parliament. By this conduct, they 
showed their political wisdom, though it was 
tainted in many cases with theological bigotry 
and rancour. We may also add that a pretended 
‘toleration of liberty of conscience on the part 
of the Prince” was among the methods recom- 
mended by the Jesuit Contzen, for re-establishing 
Roman Catholicism among nations that were in 
such circumstances as England was under James 
il 

The result of James’ tyranny and blundering 
was that the throne was declared vacant ; because 
the King ‘‘ having endeavoured to subvert the 


England and the Papacy. 115 


constitution of the Kingdom by breaking the 
original compact between him and the people, 
and having by the advice of Jesuits and other 
wicked persons violated the fundamental laws, 
and having withdrawn himself out of the King- 
dom, had abdicated the government.” The 
representatives of the Commons went on to say 
that ‘‘ Experience had shown it to be inconsis- 
tent with the safety and welfare of the Protestant 
religion to be governed by a popish prince.” 
Thus our Monarchy was established upon a 
broader and more constitutional basis; and our 
constitution itself passed through another stage 
in its natural and logical development, gaining 
strength, making both for stability and freedom, 
by ridding itself of ecclesiastical interference and 
intrigue. 

The political schemes of the Jesuits were 
shattered to pieces by the Revolution Settle- 
ment. Their blundering intrigues led up to the 
exclusion of all Papists from the throne, and 
ended in the establishment of a Protestant Suc- 
cession. That succession, and the order of it, 
depends on the Act of Settlement, by which 
alone our Sovereigns have any right or title to 
the Crown. The King’s Declaration had been 
imposed to exclude, if possible, a Papist from 
the throne. It was not intended to be a theo- 
logical document; nor was it drawn up for the 
sake of expressing any speculative opinions 
about the Eucharist. It was framed solely to pro- 
tect the Regal Office and the Royal Supremacy 
against the papal authority and claims, as 
well as to guard the Sovereign’s mind and 
person against the open or secret influence 
of the Roman Court. The experiences of the 
nation under Charles II. and James II. prove 

8—2 


116 England and the Papacy. 


that its fears of Roman influence were not 
imaginary. 

The course of this history will have shown 
that some kind of security was needed ; but also 
that any oath, so far as Roman Catholics are 
concerned, may be wholly ineffectual. Until 
those principles of equivocation, which we have 
seen obtruded into our national affairs, be de- 
nounced, condemned, and altogether repudiated, 
we must agree with Cardinal Vaughan that any 
Declaration, ‘‘as a guarantee for the religion of 
the Crown,” so far as a Romanist is concerned, 
‘‘is a sham” and ‘‘is next to worthless.” This 
is the conclusion which must be drawn after an 
exhaustive and impartial enquiry into English 
Roman Catholic affairs during the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. It is gratifying that Car- 
dinal Vaughan should accept this historical 
conclusion, and acknowledge the truth of it so 
unblushingly. 


GHAPTER XIV, 


THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, AND THE 
SUPPRESSION OF THE JESUITS. 


HAT measure of toleration, which the loyal 
English Romanists had so vainly desired, 
which James the Second. had tried to give them 
illegally and perhaps dishonestly, was granted 
by Parliament, under William III., to all Dis- 
senters except the Romanists. It extended only 
to religious beliefs and practices, and many civil 
disabilities and privileges were still maintained 
by means of theological tests. The Romanists 
were excluded from the Toleration Act, and were 
liable to the Penal Statutes. For this exclusion, 
they had to thank, in the first place, that evil 
reputation which the political, anti-English, and 
unprincipled methods of the Jesuits had brought 
upon their whole body, and for which many 
excellent and loyal persons had to suffer. 

Next, the Romanists, as a body, were sus- 
pected, naturally enough, of sympathising with 
the banished family. The Pretenders belonged, 
even ostentatiously, to the papal Church: Rome 
was the centre of their activity, where they 
found an asylum and gathered followers, whence 
they received encouragement and material aid. 
The attempts of James II. in Ireland, and of 
the two Pretenders in Scotland, showed that 
Romanists in the British Isles were willing to 


118 England and the Papacy. 


fight for the Stuarts, and that they connected 
their religious interests with the fortunes of the 
excluded branch. 

The causes of national independence, of civil, 
political, and religious liberty, as expressed by 
the Revolution of 1688, were only secured by the 
genius and victories of Marlborough; and the 
Protestant Succession itself was not unassailable 
until the Jacobites were beaten finally in 1746. 
After that time, but not until then, there was no 
more political danger to be expected from the 
English Romanists. Their history was quiet 
and uneventful; and, in about thirty years, the 
question of their fuller Relief began to be urged 
in Parliament. 

For the distinction made, in 1689, between the 
English Papists and all other Nonconformists, 
there were reasons which had nothing to do with 
theological intolerance or hatred. The English 
Romanists, by acknowledging the Pope, were 
necessarily on a different footing from all other 
Dissenters. They were not merely a sect within 
the nation, which differed theologically from the 
Established Church. They were that, of course; 
but they were also a body of men who acknow- 
ledged the claims and jurisdiction of a foreign 
power. That power had been a dangerous and 
unresting enemy to the State, and to the whole 
spirit of our institutions, for more than a century. 
Its adherents, both British and foreign, were 
still, under William III., opposing the Govern- 
ment and the wishes of the majority. 

It was for these reasons that the Papists were 
excluded from the Toleration Act of 1689, and 
were included in the severe Penal Act of 1700. 
The intention of that measure was political, and 
not theological. It was not passed in a blind 


England and the Papacy. 119 


hatred of Popery, but as a protection against 
those who, rightly or wrongly, were held to be 
enemies of the Government. 

The populace were not so far wrong when they 
coupled the Pope and the Pretender, or when 
they connected each of them with designs against 
the religion and liberties of the nation. The 
papal system cannot avoid mingling religion 
and politics in an inextricable confusion, to the 
gross injury of both. Indeed, in the past, it 
has too often encouraged that confusion, and 
utilized it for its own political advantage, not 
hesitating to sacrifice, in the pursuit of such 
schemes, its most loyal supporters. That was 
the fate brought upon English Romanists by 
the Bulls of Pius and Sixtus, and also by the 
attitude which the Roman authorities prescribed 
in the matter of the oath to James the First. 
Toleration was not won, but was only hindered 
and made impossible, by these principles and 
methods. Those who persisted in them were 
excluded from toleration for one hundred and 
forty years after all other Dissenters had obtained 
it. 
Toleration for all Protestant Dissenters was 
really won by the Christian methods, the passive 
resistance, the unconquerable goodness, the 
orderly and blameless conduct of the Society 
of Friends. The great battle, if we may venture 
to describe it so, of George Fox and his disciples 
lasted about forty years. In the course of it, 
13,000 Friends were imprisoned in Great Britain ; 
322 of them died in gaol; many were sold into 
slavery, and transported ; all of them were im- 
poverished by fines, by damaged properties, and 
by interrupted business. Nothing could over- 
come their invincible patience. If they were 


120 England and the Papacy. 


ejected through the doors of their Meeting, they 
climbed in again through the windows. If the 
walls were pulled down, they meditated among the 
ruins. Neither altars, nor candles, nor vestments, 
nor even books were required for their spiritual 
worship. The Inner Light shone clear to them 
in every time and place ; it could not be hidden 
by darkness or disturbance: ‘‘ Nothing plotting, 
naught caballing, unmischievous synod! con- 
vocation without intrigue! parliament without 
debate!” as Lamb describes them. Against 
such Christians as these, there could be no 
effectual coercion. Their high principles and 
their faultless behaviour gained the cause of 
Toleration, though at an heroical expenditure of 
life and suffering. No bloodshed, however, can 
be laid to their charge: they planned no inva- 
sions, and plotted no assassinations. They never 
slandered their foes or their allies. They had 
no political ambitions, no lust of power. They 
were soiled by no intrigues. Instead of equi- 
vocating, they declined all oaths; and their 
affirmations were inviolable. 

There is no more striking contrast, in prin- 
ciples and methods, than between Parsons and 
George Fox. There can be no question which 
of the two men lived, thought, spoke, and 
laboured more literally in the spirit of the New 
Testament, or more simply according to the 
precepts of the Master. Even in this world, 
Fox and his disciples had their reward. Their 
victory was as conspicuous as the failure of 
Parsons and all his methods. 

The popular estimation in which the Friends 
and the Jesuits were held respectively is equally 
creditable to the sound instincts of the nation. 
The early Friends stood for that which was 


England and the Papacy. HOM 


honest, simple, truthful, honourable, and worthy 
of the fullest confidence in every sphere of 
human intercourse ; and, as a body, the English 
Quakers have never forfeited that reputation. 
It still remains to be won by several denomina- 
tions of professing Christians. 

The way chosen by the Friends is the only 
way in which a nation can be lawfully ‘‘ sub- 
jected to the sole over-lordship of Christ.” To 
attempt it by intriguing or by fighting for the 
‘‘dominion of the state” is to violate the first 
principles of Christ’s kingdom. An apparent 
victory, gained by the vilest methods of this 
world, could only result in the loss or corruption 
of all genuine Christianity. Such a victory 
would be the most irreparable of all disasters 
for religion. 

The political methods of the Jesuits, their 
incessant quarrels with other ecclesiastics, their 
incurable meddling with affairs of State, their 
dubious reputation with regard to finance and 
trade, and many other accusations, in which no 
doubt both fact and imagination had a share, 
wearied out most Roman Catholic Governments 
towards the middle of the eighteenth century. 

The Society was suppressed by Clement XIV. 
in 1773. The Popes had long felt that they 
possessed, if not a master, yet a dangerous and 
unreliable servant, in the Jesuit organization. 
Innocent XI. had tried to end the Society by 
forbidding it to enlist more novices. Many 
Popes had wished to restrain or to reform it; 
but there was neither method, nor vigour, nor 
continuity in their proceedings. ‘‘It required 
the calm determination of so firm a Pontiff as 
Clement XIV. to do the deed. He saw that the 
time had come when the Society no longer 


122 England and the Papacy. 


served the Church. Hence he was bound to 
consider the interest of the whole body of the 
faithful before that of a mere Society. In the 
past, other religious orders had been suppressed 
when they had become a hindrance. The Jesuits 
were in no way necessary to the divine mission 
of the Church, under whose name they had 
sought their own ends. So, after a long en- 
quiry, over which he would not be hurried by 
the clamour of the Bourbon Courts, after scrupu- 
lously weighing the whole case, he issued, on 
21st July, 1773, his famous Breve, Dominus ac 
Redemptor noster, and suppressed the Jesuits.’’* 
The Pope was attacked in the most scurrilous 
way by Jesuit lampoons and slanderers, accord- 
ing to the approved methods of the Society. 
His motives, his character, his origin, his family 
were all traduced. ‘‘I do not repent of what I 
have done,” he said: ‘‘I did not resolve upon 
the measure until I had well weighed it. I 
would do it again; but this will be my death- 
blow.” He died, in fact, a year and two months 
afterwards, declining mysteriously in the vigour 
of his age. After he was struck down, he said: 
‘‘When a man goes to the trenches, he must 
expect a cannon-ball.”” To the physician, who 
was baffled by his complaint, he said: ‘‘ You 
will find it described in the gist Psalm, as 
‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness.’” To 
others, who asked if he did not suspect certain 
people of having attempted his life, he answered: 
‘*Do you not know that my name is Silence?” 
Clement XIV. may be numbered among those 
benevolent and reforming sovereigns of the 
eighteenth century, who tried in vain to amend 


*Taunton: ‘‘ History of the Jesuits in England.” 


England and the Papacy. 12g 


and serve a political and social order that was 
past saving. He was respected by his subjects 
for his excellent and honest administration. He 
avoided all nepotism, that persistent and suspi- 
cious habit of the papal dynasties. He used to say, 
‘‘that to render WVepotism odious, he had taken 
Benedict XIV. for his model.” Hewasa scholar, 
as well as a statesman; and his Letters bear wit- 
ness to his cultivated and kindly nature. They 
also show his admiration for England, as well as 
his remarkable knowledge of our institutions. 
‘““The English have principles to go on,” he 
said; ‘‘and therefore with them alone will the 
love of their country never be extinguished.” 
For Newton, he had a profound esteem: ‘‘ Never 
did man unite, like him, science with simplicity.” 
‘‘T sometimes pay a visit to Newton by night. 
While all nature seems to sleep, I sit up to read 
and admire him.” 

The document suppressing the Jesuits should 
be read by everyone who desires to understand 
why the methods and principles of the Roman 
Court, as represented by its most active and 
consistent agents, were suspected and feared by 
every Government, and by all moderate Ro- 
manists. The charges against the Society show 
what was tolerated, and even utilized for so 
long, by the Papacy. Clement proves himself to 
be an exception in the policy and line of the 
Roman Pontiffs, both by suppressing the Jesuits 
and by moderating the papal claims for the sake 
of peace with the civil governments. Optimus 
Pontificum, he might well be named. None of 
his accusations, it should be noted, were dis- 
proved or even challenged when the Society 
was revived in 1814. 

As Mr. Taunton has pointed out: ‘‘ The Jesuits 


124 England and the Papacy. 


had had the education of Catholic Europe prac- 
tically in their own hands in the seventeenth 
century ; and it was precisely from the descen- 
dants of their pupils that there arose a revolt 
against a yoke which had become unbearable. 
What brought about the suppression of the 
Society brought also the Revolution.” 

Perhaps it might be truer to say that the 
serious tampering with morals, which the casu- 
istry of the Jesuits allowed; their venal and 
tyrannical mis-use of power; their alliance with 
the ruling classes, and their pernicious influence 
upon them; as well as their opposition to 
reforms, and to every enlargement of intellec- 
tual, religious, or civic liberty, were all among 
the chief causes which led inevitably to revolu- 
tion; and that the remedy of the Suppression 
was applied too late to be a cure for the diseases 
of a corrupt and perishing society. 


CHAPTER XV. 


Tue REVIVAL OF THE PAPACY, AND THE 
INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 


STRANGE revival of medizvalism and 
papalism followed the downfall of Napoleon 
in 1814. It was caused partly by political 
reaction or fatigue after twenty-five years of 
revolutionary effort and excess. The Roman 
Pontificate was accepted as a symbol of order 
and stability, as the oldest representative of 
legitimate and absolute monarchy. The Con- 
ress of Vienna restored the Papal States. The 
Holy Alliance regarded the Popes as brother 
sovereigns and allies. These notions gave a 
new life and importance to the Papacy, which, 
throughout the eighteenth century, had sunk to 
the level of all the other corrupt and worn-out 
monarchies. * 

On the other hand, after 1814, there was a 
growing sense of nationality, of democracy, of 
socialism. The spirit of the Revolution was 
fermenting and fructifying below the conserva- 
tive and repressive surface. This movement, 
too, has been advantageous to the Papacy. The 
Curia, with its invariable adroitness, utilized the 
reverence of the kingly and imperial dynasties, 


* Walpole’s Letters, IV., 264: Cunningham’s edition. 


126 England and the. Papacy. 


for legitimacy and absolutism, to strengthen its 
own territorial position in Italy; as well as its 
administrative authority, over its adherents, in 
all other countries. It also utilized the growing 
democratic spirit, by posing as the friend of 
liberty, and the opponent of arbitrary power. 
The Vatican had one set of opinions and politics 
for the government of its own States, and 
another for its adherents in several foreign coun- 
tries. It repressed liberalism in Rome, and 
nationalism throughout Italy. It fomented both 
in Poland, for example, or in Ireland. The 
result has been an immense growth of the papal 
authority and influence. 

In England, all fear of the Romanists, as a 
political body, ceased after 1745. The Penal 
Statutes were not repealed, but they were not 
enforced. Their modification and repeal began 
to be urged systematically in Parliament. From 
the time of Walpole onwards, the governing 
and more enlightened classes would have been 
willing to grant a large measure of toleration to 
the Papists; but they were hampered by popular 
passion on one side, by Royal and middle class 
prejudices on the other. The passions of the 
mob flamed out in the Gordon Riots of 1780, 
which were a protest against the concessions to 
the Romanists gained by Sir George Savile in 
‘1778. There was also an esthetic movement 
of interest and sympathy towards the middle 
ages, which did a great deal to soften prejudice 
against the supposed representative of the 
medieval Church. Gray and Horace Walpole 
were the pioneers of this movement in England. 
Sir Walter Scott did a great deal more to popu- 
larise and spread it. The social aspects of the 
middle ages were also attracting thinkers and 


England and the Papacy. 127 


reformers: they were rousing an interest which 
soon passed on to imitation. 

In all these movements there was more 
zeal than scholarship, more heat than light. 
They were carried on by men who saw the 
middle ages, not as they really were, either 
ecclesiastically, intellectually, or socially, but as 
they pictured them ina goiden halo of chivalry 
and of romance. These yearnings for a larger 
and fuller life, which it was thought the middle 
ages could inspire or satisfy, popularised and 
spread a theoretical and very  unhistorical 
Catholicism. The English Government helped 
the Pope, as an Italian sovereign, during the 
troubles of the Revolution and the Napoleonic 
wars. The nation extended much kindness and 
hospitality to the fugitive clergy, and to other 
refugees from France. The English Romanists 
themselves had been governed for a long while 
by an Arch-priest, whose appointment the. Jesuits 
opposed bitterly; whose person and office, when 
the appointment was made, they endeavoured to 
influence and utilize for their own advantage. 
The Arch-priests were succeeded by Vicars 
Apostolic; that is, by Bishops zm Partibus, whose 
jurisdictions were known as districts instead 
of dioceses. Under their guidance, English 
Roman Catholic affairs went on quietly; and 
they were creditably represented in the spheres 
of learning and administration by Challoner, 

Milner, Alban Butler, Berington, and Lingard. 
' Emancipation was carried gradually under all 
these favourable influences, and it was com- 
pleted by the passing of the Relief Bill in 1829. 
The value of that concession was diminished, 
because it was granted in the end to popular 
clamour and threats of violence. The wisdom 


128 England and the Papacy. 


of it is even more questionable; because, as 
Nippold has observed, ‘‘ Wellington’s Tory 
ministry, in their desire to outdo the Whigs, 
carried the emancipation through in a manner 
which did not stop with satisfying the just 
demands of the times, but tore down bulwarks 
indispensable for the protection of the State.” 
What he means is, that the Government, in 
granting Emancipation, made no terms with the 
papal authorities, exacted no pledges from them, 
obtained nothing in return, by way of patronage 
or veto, which gave them any control over 
those who exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
and guided the policy of the English Romanists. 

With a native sect, this complete surrender 
would have been natural and harmless. In the 
case of a body which is controlled by a foreign 
power, which is moved ultimately by political 
and mundane agencies, this complete surrender 
was dangerous, and it has placed the Govern- 
ment at a serious disadvantage in negociating 
with the agents of the Vatican. The disadvan- 
tage has been more apparent since the establish- 
ment of a papal hierarchy in 1850. This foreign 
organization, as a body, and with respect to 
the Crown, is in a very different position from 
our national hierarchy in the middle ages. One 
body is not the successor of the other, and there 
is no comparison between them. In the middle 
ages, the Crown limited the Pope’s jurisdiction, 
both as regards persons, patronage, legislation, 
and papal utterances. Now, there is no limit to 
the exercise of the Pope’s authority. A violent 
and foolish outcry was made about the territorial 
designations of the new bishops, while the more 
dangerous and objectionable aspect of their new 
position was left unnoticed. 


England and the Papacy. 129 


It would be against our principles of toleration 
to interfere with the spiritual functions and titles 
of the papal bishops. They are as indifferent in 
themselves, and should be as free, as those of all 
other dissenting ministers. Titles and honours, 
however, which are derived from the papal 
Court are on a different footing. It seems to be 
forgotten that the Crown is the sole fount of 
honour for English subjects ; and they can not, 
legally, accept foreign titles without leave from 
their own sovereign. No medizval bishop 
would have been allowed to accept or to use 
the dignity of the cardinalate without the leave 
and dispensation of the Crown. Cardinals, 
Monsignori, papal titles of nobility, have of 
themselves no rights of precedence and recogni- 
tion within the dominions of the Crown. They 
are temporal decorations of the papal Court, and 
are Clearly to be distinguished from the spiritual 
or ministerial functions and titles of the Roman 

Catholic Church. 

When Emancipation was granted to the Eng- 
lish Romanists, they were, as Newman says, 
with his incurable and deceptive rhetoric, ‘‘ not 
a sect, not even an interest,’ ‘‘not a body,” 
‘“‘but a mere handful of individuals.” The 
Government, in its blindness, probably never 
contemplated the establishment of an Italian 
hierarchy, or the altered position of the Ro- 
manists through Irish immigration, and the vast 
growth of population. There had been some 
uneasiness about the claims and policy of the 
Roman Court; because the Irish bishops, before 
the granting of Emancipation, and with the 
assent of the papal Legate, declared officially 
that the theory of papal infallibility was not in 
accordance with the teaching and theology of 


9 


130 England and the Papacy. 


the Catholic Church. This episcopal declara- 
tion was made in 1828, to remove difficulties 
about Emancipation. Within fifty years, papal 
infallibility was defined, Catholic teaching and 
theology were defied, the Irish episcopate had 
to recant their opinion, and all the papal 
catechisms had to be re-edited. This change of 
front, so far as it is theological, only concerns 
the Romanists; but the political consequences 
of it affect the relations of the Papacy with 
every national episcopate, and with every civil 
Government. 

Throughout the century of papal development 
and expansion, from the reign of Pius VII. 
until now, statesmen and Governments have 
shown a fatal and an inexcusable ignorance about 
the nature and principles of Romanism. They 
have been disunited, they have worked upon no 
system, they have adopted no common policy, 
in dealing with a centralized and yet universal 
power. They have been defeated, time after 
time, in detail; and the defeats or concessions 
of any one Government have been quoted as pre- 
cedents, or used as the pretext for new demands, 
against all the others. In these unchanging 
and skilful tactics, ‘‘ which count, not by years, 
but by decades and by centuries,” all the advan- 
tage is with that organized and central adminis- 
tration, with its immense experience and its 
unswerving policy, which foresees everything, 
and never despises or neglects the smallest 
detail. 

The power and influence of the Curia, its 
position in the world, its relation to all civil 
Governments, and to all the Christian Churches, 
including those which owe obedience to it, 
have been changed by the new doctrine of 


England and the Papacy. 131 


papal infallibility. According to the Vatican 
decree, ‘‘the declarations of the Roman Pontiff 
are of themselves, and not merely by the assent 
of the Church, absolute and irrevocable” (zrrefor- 
mabviles). In other words, the Pontiff, personally, 
is now superior to the Church in council. He 
stands outside and above it, separated from it: 
an external authority, who may dictate his own 
Opinions to it and impose his own will upon it, 
but who need receive nothing from it. 

General Councils are now both cumbersome 
and superfluous. The episcopate may add to 
the ritual and state with which a Pope can pro- 
mulgate his definitions. It has no longer any 
necessary voice or function in deciding what 
the Roman faith has been, or should be. Thus 
the Papacy, in striving by devious methods for 
an external unity of organization, as a means of 
aggrandizing and concentrating its own power, 
has transformed the Roman Church into an 
ecclesiastical autocracy over which the Pope is 
theoretically supreme. The old warning of 
Gregory I. has come true. His successors have 
become universal Pontiffs, and in so doing they 
have practically annihilated the episcopate. 

The chief agents in this revolution, in this 
coup d Eglise, have been the Jesuits. The organi- 
zation and theology, which they fabricated and 
launched at Trent, has culminated quite logically, 
and even necessarily, in the decree of papal 
infallibility. The Jesuits, restored by Pius VII., 
and since then carrying everything before them, 
are held, rightly or wrongly, to be the influence 
behind the throne. They are supposed to direct 
that system and policy which they initiated and 
organized. They are suspected of dictating to 
the Curia, and of directing the Pope. The next 


Q—2 


132 England and the Papacy. 


move in their political campaign is expected to 
be a definition of the Temporal Power as an 
article of faith. 

The effects of the new belief in papal infalli- 
bility upon the Roman Church are chiefly of 
interest to Romanists themselves; though they 
cannot and should not be indifferent to any 
observers of theology and politics. Students of 
Church history may wonder, nevertheless, how 
the new beliefs and principles of the Ultra- 
montane leaders are compatible with medizval 
Romanism; how the procedure and beliefs of 
Constance, for example, can be reconciled with 
the Vatican decrees; how the decisions and 
actions of many Popes can be squared with 
these new theories of personal infallibility in the 
whole succession. To reconcile these new papal 
dogmas with the old principles, faith, procedure, 
and records of historical Catholicism is altogether 
impossible. 

The effects of papal infallibility on politics, 
on the relations between Church and State, 
between the Curia and the Governments of the 
world, are very decidedly of supreme interest to 
all men. Many writers have urged that the 
new decree was nothing short of revolutionary ; 
that the dormant and theoretical infallibility of 
a corporation scattered through the world, 
moderated in its action by complex and con- 
flicting interests, which as a matter of experience 
met and spoke rarely, at long intervals, is 
quite a different thing from the active and 
effectual infallibility of a single person, who 
represents a centralized organisation in per- 
manent existence. Such writers argue that 
the principles of Vaticanism, if pushed to their 
logical conclusion, are incompatible with civic 


England and the Papacy. 133 


liberty and the rights of temporal governments. 
Moreover, as they go on to show, there is no 
guarantee that these principles may not at any 
time be so applied and pushed as to become a 
serious danger. History and experience all point 
to that danger as more than theoretical. 

From these arguments, there have been many 
ingenious evasions. There has never been any 
reply which meets or disposes of the objections 
raised. The principles of Vaticanism are full of 
danger, and are liable to all these objections. 
The only element of safety and protection for 
the civil power is that the great majority of 
Papists, like the professors of all other theo- 
logies, are never prepared, at any one time, to 
carry out their principles consistently. 

By the Vatican decree, all the activity and 
authority of the papal organization have become 
centralized in Rome, as they never were before. 
Even the Benedictine Order, which hitherto, 
throughout its long and honourable history, has 
been so liberal in its administration, so conserva- 
tive and primitive in its traditions, so national in 
its government and spirit, is being attacked and 
changed by the craze for centralization and for 
the Italianization of everything in the papal 
Church. The activity of the papal propaganda 
among the various nations has probably never 
been so great, or in some directions so effective. 
The Press and the Bourse are both manipulated, 
to a dangerous extent, in the interests of the 
Curia. 

In wealth and influence, the Papacy, at the 
opening of the twentieth century, is in a very 
different position from the Papacy at the opening 
of the nineteenth. Leo XIII. has realized many 
things which Leo XII. appears to have foreseen 


134 England and the Papacy. 


and planned. The loss of the Temporal Power 
has been more than compensated by that growth 
of diplomatic influence and interference which 
has been caused by the acquisition of personal 
infallibility; but these gains are thought little 
of in themselves, by the Vatican and its agents, 
except as a means for winning back those 
territorial dominions upon which, as they think, 
the existence of the whole papal sovereignty and 
system ultimately depends. 

The direct and melancholy influence of these 
temporal ambitions upon Italy, the indirect and 
disturbing effects of them upon other European 
countries, especially upon Austria and France, 
do not belong properly to our present subject; 
but they should be noted and examined by all 
those who wish to understand the Papacy. The 
mundane policy and interests of the Vatican 
have a decided influence upon its attitude 
towards the English Government and all our 
Imperial affairs. A world-wide Empire must 
come into contact with an organization which is 
scattered through the nations. The primary 
interests of those who rule that organization are 
secular, and not religious ; and this conclusion, 
which is so amply confirmed by history, should 
never be forgotten by those who are dealing 
politically with Romanists and their concerns. 

There is no more cruel and shameless impos- 
ture, in this world of delusions, than the claim to 
infallibility made by the Roman ecclesiastics. 
That claim is deduced, first, from the words 
which are reported to have been said to Peter; 
but, even granting the certainty and accuracy of 
the text itself, the words as we have them will 
not bear the papal interpretation. The claim to 
theological infallibility is deduced, next, from 


England and the Papacy. 135 


the assertion that the gates of Hades shall not 
prevail against the Church. 

As far as morality and righteousness are 
concerned, we can say that, on the whole and 
speaking generally, this promise has_ been 
fulfilled. Even in’ the darkest and the worst 
of times, the Church has professed officially to 
uphold, and some of her members have always 
borne witness to, the divine righteousness. No 
claim to theological infallibility can, however, 
be sustained by any truthful and competent 
enquirer, if he understand or deal honestly with 
the records of the past. This is true of the 
Church as a whole: it is far more true of the 
new and narrower claim to infallibility made by 
the Roman Pontiffs. 

Neither theoretically in its origin, nor practi- 
cally in its exercise, will the papal claim to 
infallibility bear investigation. The infallible 
Roman Church has no satisfying answer for the 
scriptural, or scientific, or social problems of 
modern thinkers. Far from resolving such 
problems, it increases and complicates them ; 
because it imposes on its adherents and apolo- 
gists all the weight of its own compromising and 
stultifying past. They are encumbered on one 
hand by the illimitable claims of Rome, and on 
the other by a melancholy record of blundering 
and crime. These are added to all the difficulties 
which are inherent in Christianity itself, as in 
every other systematic explanation of the super- 
natural, and of our relation to it. 

If we may judge by the past, the infallible 
Papacy has not helped, but has hindered, and 
has often endangered, the progress of knowledge 
and of liberty. It has too often mis-used and 
injured the benefactors of mankind. Human 


136 England and the Papacy. 


progress has been won in spite of the Papacy, 
not by means of it. In the sphere of politics, 
too, the Papacy has often proved itself a blind 
and a treacherous guide. In the matter of Eliza- 
beth’s excommunication and of the oath of alle- 
giance to King James, it certainly betrayed and 
probably deceived, those who trusted it. 

According to some of its modern apologists, 
the Papacy had no right to depose a sovereign, 
or to interfere with our succession ; yet it ordered 
its adherents to act as though it had those 
rights, and it left them to bear the consequences 
of acting. During the reigns of John and Henry 
III., of Mary I. and of James II., no English- 
man can hold that the Papacy was on the right 
side, or that its principles and policy would have 
been advantageous to the country, or even to 
religion. There is no reason to suppose that 
the Popes are likely to be sounder and surer 
guides with respect to modern politics. The 
Papacy has not been less mistaken in the regions 
of Church history and theology. : 

As far as results and practice are concerned, 
the Papacy can hardly claim, in the face of 
history, to have been a leader in morals: and 
when it proclaims its omniscience in the regions 
of the unseen and the unknown, we may well 
doubt its competency if we judge it by those 
matters in which we have experience. 

The papal claims and office, moreover, are 
not found in Christianity from the beginning. 
We can point to an age when they did not 
exist; to a polity and a theology which both 
exclude them. They rose gradually. We can 
show at every stage the causes and progress 
of their acceptance. ‘‘Le monde se paye de 
paroles,” as Pascal writes: ‘‘ The world cheats 


England and the Papacy. 137 


’ 


itself with phrases ;” and it has allowed itself to 
be disturbed and cheated for about eight centuries 
by these claimants to theological infallibility. 
As we read the disputes and controversies of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the posi- 
tions and arguments of the ecclesiastical dispu- 
tants appeal to us no longer. They are equally 
vain and inconclusive on both sides. We cannot 
accept their notions of the universe, their valua- 
tion of documents, their attitude towards autho- 
rity, their use of evidence, or their standards of 
knowledge. In all these matters, we have moved 
entirely out of their plane. 

Neither papal, nor puritan, nor Calvinistic 
arguments, as they were used in those days of 
controversy, can weigh with us, who must 
accept modern standards of knowledge, who are 
influenced by critical and scientific methods, 
who have inherited that historical spirit which 
alone enables us to reconstruct and comprehend 
the past. Theologians and their systems must 
submit to these tests, or they will perish. They 
will no longer be taken by the world at their 
own valuation ; and, the higher their claims, the 
more rigorously will their history, their prin- 
ciples, and their practice be examined. _ 


CHAPTER 28 


THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MODERN PAPACY 
UNCHANGED. 


T may be thought by non-Romanists, and 
it is often asserted by the agents of the 
Vatican, that the methods and principles of the 
Papacy have changed ; that the papal claims are 
not what they were. There has, indeed, been 
a change, but it is all in the direction of abso- 
lutism and retrogression. The claims of Rome 
have not diminished, but increased, and the 
decree of papal infallibility has made them far 
more dangerous and effective than they were 
before. It is true, that public opinion is, at 
present, against the methods and procedure of 
the Inquisition, and active intolerance is not 
allowed. The temper, however, which allows 
and approves those methods is encouraged in 
many Roman Catholic nations by a scurrilous 
and influential press. We are not in danger, 
as yet, from persecution or repression; but, in 
some countries, non-Romanists are liable to 
outbreaks of hostility and fanaticism; and the 
opponents of the Papacy are subjected, wherever 
the clerical press is flourishing, to the most 
wanton and scandalous accusations. 
Individual Romanists, here and there, may 
profess Liberalism and toleration; but these are 
merely individual opinions. They must always 


England and the Papacy. 139 


be balanced against individual opinions of the 
opposite kind, which are also professed by 
many Romanists, and inspire too many organs 
in the clerical press. These Liberal opinions 
are often served up for the benefit of non- 
Romanists, especially in England and America. 
Those who profess them, even when they are 
bishops, may be personally quite honest; but 
their personal opinions are also quite worthless. 
They bind no one but the individual writer or 
speaker; and he may be forced at any time to 
withdraw his words and sympathies, as Arch- 
bishop Ireland was forced. As Hergenrother 
says: ‘‘The Church doth not on principle 
renounce rights which she has once exercised, 
and whose exercise might become necessary 
again.” 

When the Buzllarium Romanum is expurgated 
and re-edited; when the extravagant claims of 
such Popes as Gregory VII., Innocent III., 
Boniface VIII., are repudiated officially ; when 
the blasphemous epithets which have been ap- 
plied to them are withdrawn and condemned ; 
when their acts are denounced, and are proved 
in detail to have been unlawful; when all that 
intolerant and virulent language is removed, 
which circulates at present in the Moral Theolo- 
gies, and in other text books which are used to 
educate the clergy; when all this is done by the 
highest authority, that is, by Roman Congrega- 
tions speaking officially, then, and not until 
then, can we believe that the Curia has changed 
its principles and methods. Until this happen, 
we can only think, unless we wish to be deceived, 
that the Papacy is lying low, and is concealing 
its true designs, and is merely waiting for its 
chance to speak openly, and to act up to its 


140 England and the Papacy. 


opinions. We have seen instances of that 
policy in the conflict with Elizabeth. 

The principles of the modern Papacy are, 
surely, exhibited in the Syllabus of 1864, so far 
as its attitude to modern thought and institutions 
is concerned. The Roman Court has not, 
fortunately, the power to carry its principles 
into practice; but there can be no doubt, from 
its official utterances, what its principles and 
predilections are. It is opposed to toleration, 
to liberty of conscience, to free enquiry, to the 
rights of individuals and of minorities, to the 
equality of all religions under the protection of 
the State. All these things are condemned as 
pernicious errors. Force is advocated and justi- 
fied as a remedy against theological differences. 
The model State, according to the Vatican, is 
one in which the ecclesiastical .authority is so 
predominant that the civil power must carry out 
its orders against all dissentients. These princi- 
ples lead, necessarily, to an Inquisition; to the 
polity and procedure which have resulted invari- 
ably when such principles have been accepted. 

These principles are not only adhered to, they 
have not only been expressed clearly in official 
utterances by the reigning Pope and his pre- 
decessor, but, so far as is practicable, they are 
still acted upon. They are acted upon, for 
example, by the publication of an Index of 
prohibited books. If the principle of an Index 
be sound and justifiable, it should be enforced 
by the ecclesiastical authorities, and welcomed 
by those who accept their guidance. If it be 
unsound and really anti-Christian, it is an 
abominable tyranny, and a crime against our 
human intellect and progress. Yet there are 
Roman apologists who will not accept frankly 


England and the Papacy. 141 


and fully either one alternative or the other. 
They are really afraid of their own principles, 
and are equally afraid to renounce them. 

An authority which claims to be infallible 
cannot have the right to play with edged tools 
in this way; asserting, merely according to its 
own convenience, or to its audience, sometimes 
that they are effective and obligatory, sometimes 
that they are obsolete. Such methods and such 
weapons must be fatal, either to the authority 
itself, or to those who trust in it. It was this 
unscrupulous policy which was responsible, as 
I have pointed out, for all the executions of 
Romanists under Queen Elizabeth. 

A similar method is used, notwithstanding a 
great parade of impartiality and of historical 
research, in describing the relations of England 
to the Papacy since the Reformation. The 
violences and the aggressive acts of the Papacy, 
its alliances with foreign enemies or domestic 
rebels, and its repressive policy abroad wherever 
it was in power, are all ignored, and the whole 
weight of the so-called historian is laid upon 
the sufferings and the blameless lives of the 
English Romanists. The result is a false and 
very deceptive presentation of history, which in 
the end must defeat its own object, and injure 
its own Cause. 

More and more, it is probable, as the historical 
Spirit grows, as historical methods are pursued 
and the scientific mind is acquired, men will 
desire to know impartially what really happened. 
They will be dissatisfied with partizan histories 
of events and institutions. The popular con- 
ception of the Papacy must be affected by 
these causes. The Papacy will be judged by 
history, instead of judging it: it will no longer 


142 England and the Papacy. 


be accepted blindly at its own valuation- by 
apologists and partizans; nor will it be mis- 
judged by ignorant, blatant, and prejudiced 
opponents. 

The Jesuit historians and apologists have still 
much to learn about the methods of historical 
research and statement. Mr. Taunton has to 
complain, in his excellent ‘‘ History of the 
Jesuits in England,” of Brother Foley’s unfair 
and deceptive handling of documents. ‘‘ Foley’s 
eight volumes of Records cannot be taken as a 
history of the body to which he belonged. 
They are only a collection or, rather, selection 
of documents. Foley’s value consists almost as 
much in his omissions as in his admissions. 
And I am bound to remark that I have found 
him, at a critical point, quietly leaving out, 
without any signs of omission, an essential part 
of a document which was adverse to his case. 
His volumes of Records cannot, I regret to have 
to say it openly, be taken as trustworthy, unless 
corroborated by more scrupulous writers.” 

Mr. Taunton’s experience must be shared by 
all enquirers who search the original documents 
for themselves, instead of trusting printed 
authorities. To such enquirers, the ‘‘ value” of 
partizan writers like Foley is apparent and 
suggestive; but such practices grievously mislead 
the unsuspecting general reader, who cannot 
investigate for himself, but who has as much 
right as the professional historian to know the 
truth. Besides direct and deliberate violations 
of historical truth, there is still to be found in 
the prefaces to some Church histories a com- 
mendation of scientific methods and impartial 
scholarship, while in the body of such works 
all these principles are flagrantly and systemati- 


England and the Papacy. 143 


cally violated. These principles and practices 
are not a monopoly of the papal controversialists. 

However, the Jesuit apologists are open to 
a more serious charge with respect to honesty 
and truth. They have sanctioned and adopted 
a system of casuistry, of mental reservation, of 
manipulating words and phrases, which strikes 
at all the laws of evidence and honour, which 
destroys all confidence in human words, and 
conduct, and motives. These principles must be 
allowed for, and guarded against, in all Jesuit 
controversialists, by those who do not wish to be 
deceived and tricked. No quotation of theirs 
should ever be accepted unless it be verified, 
and be found in agreement with the context. 
No assertion or denial should ever be trusted, 
unless it can be supported by external and 
independent evidence. 

Jesuit controversialists have themselves to 
thank for the distrust with which they are 
regarded. When their current principles of 
casuistry are officially repudiated, exposed, and 
condemned by the papal authorities, then their 
assertions may be accepted, like those of all 
other authors. At present, they cannot have 
the right to these principles and also the right 
to be believed. They must choose between the 
two. They cannot have the advantage of 
casuistry, and of implicit confidence. Those 
who allow such principles, even in theory, must 
not have that same right to be believed which 
is conceded without suspicion or reserve to those 
who repudiate casuistry and equivocation in all 
its forms. 

A similar argument applies to all the diplo- 
matic utterances and engagements of the Papacy 
and its representatives. Both historical ex- 


144 England and the Papacy. 


perience and the accepted principles of casuistry 
must lead us to suspect the statements of papal 
officials and partizans. It is asserted bravely, 
no doubt, in theological manuals and cate- 
chisms, that to lie is a mortal sin, and that 
lying is never permissible even to serve the 
Church; but the casuists prove easily that 
hardly any manipulation of the truth need 
technically be a lie. The principles and precepts 
which guided Parsons are still accepted, on the 
whole, by his successors. His practices are not 
obsolete among them. The old controversial 
methods of suppressing or manipulating what is 
true, of suggesting and insinuating what is 
false, of blackening the motives and character 
of opponents whose case is unassailable by 
argument, are still to be found among papal 
controversialists. 

Our long enquiry has shown, I think, that 
our English nature and institutions are irrecon- 
cilable with the papal system, and that they 
always have been. The enmity between Eng- 
land and Rome is not merely theological. It is 
caused by a deep repugnance of nature, and by 
principles which cannot be accommodated to one 
another, or held consistently and simultaneously 
by the same person. This repugnance is found 
through all our history. The incompatibility 
between Roman and English principles, between 
the Papacy and freedom, is as strong as ever, 
though the hostility may be less violent and 
obtrusive. It will, however, flame out again at 
‘any time, and upon the slightest provocation. 

Theology is only the commonest, and perhaps 
not the deepest, cause of these conflagrations. 
As we examine the past, we find the Papacy, at 
every stage of our progress, in conflict with our 


England and the Papacy. ~~ 145 


liberties and the whole spirit of our institutions. 
It was allied with the Norman conqueror; and 
we may resent the alliance, although the Con- 
quest proved itself a blessing in disguise. The 
Pope supported John, and Henry III., and 
Mary Tudor, and Charles I., and James II. He 
opposed Henry II., and the Reformation, and 
Queen Elizabeth, and Cromwell, and William 
III. . That is to say, he supported every cause 
and person which has been opposed to the 
growth and development of our Constitution, 
or of our greatness. He has opposed every 
cause and principle which we regard as having 
helped us to be what we are. 

The Papacy and the English spirit are incom- 
patibles; because the Italian Curia has never 
understood and has always mistrusted our free 
institutions. ‘‘ Liberty to Latins means licence. 
It never enters into their mind that the best 
remedy for the abuse of Liberty is more Liberty, 
which brings more responsibility. But the idea 
of the Society was to reduce, by obedience, the 
individual to nothing. Thus Liberty is espe- 
cially antagonistic to Jesuit ideas.”* The Jesuit 
system and the Jesuit notions have been imposed 
upon the government and theology of the whole 
papal Church. That Church now, therefore, 
more than ever, is incompatible with our Eng- 
lish nature, spirit, and institutions. In propor- 
tion as a man accepts one theory of life and 
thought, he must be out of sympathy with the 
other. The two systems cannot be accepted 
fully and loyally by the same person. There 
must be, as there has always been, a conflict. 

By the terms ‘‘ Rome” and ‘‘ Roman Church,” 


* Taunton: ‘‘ Jesuits in England.” 
Io 


146 England and the Papacy. 


I mean exclusively the local Church or Court of 
Rome, the Curia. I do not mean the peoples 
who make up the various national Churches in 
communion with Rome. These peoples, and 
even their hierarchies, have been the dupes and 
victims rather than the accomplices of the Roman 
See, both in the past and in the present. The 
personal goodness and devotion, the innocence, 
and the genuine piety, of too many individuals 
and nations are being utilized by the dominant 
faction for its own political aggrandisement. 
When it is suspected or accused of political 
aggression, it invariably points to the blameless 
and pious lives of individuals; who, in truth, 
have nothing to do with politics and plotting, 
but whose piety is utilized for their own ends by 
those who have. 

The Roman Curia is chiefly a political and 
financial organization, which disguises its real 
purposes under pious and theological expres- 
sions. Outsiders, as well as many devout 
Romanists, are deceived by the pious locutions 
of the Pope, not knowing or forgetting that they 
are merely the conventional or diplomatic appa- 
ratus of the Holy See; and that, of old time, 
the most tortuous plans were disguised, the 
most ferocious edicts were garnished, forthe 
sake of appearances, with these unctuous and 
hollow phrases. 

We should have no quarrel with individual 
Romanists, we need feel no bitterness towards 
them. We should always distinguish between 
the great body of Roman Catholics, scattered 
through the world, and that official, mundane 
organization which rules them from the centre. 
With the latter, no terms of any sort are possible. 
It gives no quarter, and it deserves none. It 


England and the Papacy. 147 


keeps no engagements, and it is unworthy of 
all trust. It is merely a political and financial 
organization, masquerading as a Church, ex- 
ploiting the faith and goodness of its dupes. 
Its tortuous methods, its ambitious aims, its 
tyrannical and repressive notions, its arbitrary 
Congregations and their secret procedure, are 
all equally abhorrent to our English methods, 
principles, and nature. As long as the spirit, 
methods, principles and institutions of England 
and of the papal Curia remain unchanged, 
they will be as irreconcilable with one another 
in the future as they have always been in the 
past. The principles of the Curia, like the 
declarations of the Pontiffs, are to all appearance 
“‘ trreformabiles,” ‘‘incapable of reform.” 

These conclusions, it would appear, are being 
forced more and more upon English Romanists. 
Many events abroad, and the violent hostility of 
the continental Press, among which the clerical 
organs have been most outrageous in their 
Anglophobia, have made the more thoughtful 
of the English Roman Catholics uneasy and 
suspicious. Our examination enables us to 
distinguish clearly between the principles of the 
Vatican, and the religious beliefs of those among 
us who accept the Pope’s ecclesiastical authority. 
We may believe that the Vatican is opposed to 
our English principles and institutions without 
accusing the English Romanists, either as a 
body or individually, of disloyalty and want of 
patriotism. Their loyalty has been proved 
abundantly in the past. It has been proof 
against suffering and ill-usage. Their heroism 
has been magnificent, in holding to that which 
they have believed to be religious truth. Very 
few of them, it is probable, read the continental 


162 


148 England and the Papacy. 


Press, or know what the methods and policy 
of the Curia really are. Still fewer have any 
competent knowledge of Church history and 
theology ; and the history of England has never 
been presented to them in an impartial way. 
These defects are being slowly though surely 
modified by scientific methods of thinking, and 
by the application of the same standards of 
knowledge to all who pass through public 
examinations. 


CHAPTER XVEL- 


THE EFFECTS AND FUTURE OF THE PAPACY. 


T would be untrue and unfair to hold that 
the Papacy has been altogether bad. The 
traditions of Roman law and administration were 
preserved in the old metropolis, and they were 
the cause of immense good to the barbarian con- 
querors. The Papacy, as representing law and 
order, did a great work in the evolution of a 
new society. The Benedictine missionaries, and 
Popes like Gregory the First, spread civilization 
and education throughout Europe. The Church 
affected every sphere of intellectual and social 
progress. The Popes of the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries no doubt furthered the cause of moral 
reform and of spiritual improvement; but their 
success, and the position they gained, brought 
on the moral and political ruin of the Papacy. 
The feudal organization and the immoderate 
claims of Gregory VII. led on directly to 
conflicts with the civil power, to clerical immu- 
nities, to the ambitions of Innocent III., to all 
the blasphemous attributes and pretentions of 
Boniface VIII. 

The papal supremacy in England, between 
1170 and 1535, was a period of aggression, of 
extortion, of danger to the State, and of cor- 
ruption in faith and morals. The diplomacy of 
the Curia was a by-word for chicanery and 


150 England and the Papacy. 


fraud. It sold, delayed, and denied justice. It 
trafficked openly in sacred things. The Popes, 
by their claim to absolve from oaths, that is, to 
release one party to an engagement secretly, 
behind the back of the other, destroyed the 
foundations of political confidence and of public 
faith. 

The Papacy might have been a cause of 
incalculable good: it was, in fact, a cause of 
deplorable mischief and disturbance. In the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it was the 
chief obstacle to Reform. In the sixteenth cen- 
tury, it caused all the worst medizval errors to 
be reaffirmed and systematized. Since then, it 
has been the insuperable barrier to a reunion 
of Christendom. As long as the Curia be 
governed by the present methods, and the papal 
claims be asserted with their present extrava- 
gance, there can be no reunion by means of the 
Papacy, without a betrayal of all that is most 
worth having both in Christianity and in civic 
life. Moreover, the Papacy is, in one important 
aspect, a most uncatholic and narrow institution. 
Since the Reformation, only Italians have been 
Popes; and the higher administration of the 
papal Church has been entirely in the hands, or 
under the interference, of that race. Nationality 
is always vilified by the papal advocates as 
anti-catholic; but what institutions can be 
described as more jealously exclusive and pro- 
vincial than the Papacy itself, and the whole 
government service of the Curia? 

The papal question, however, cannot be re- 
garded as a petty or a sectarian dispute. Itisa 
matter of high principle, and of truth: a test, 
it may even be, between Christ and Anti-Christ. 
Newman tells us that, although the base of St. 


England and the Papacy. 151 


Peter’s Rock may be poisonous with malaria, 
and vexed with storms, yet the air on the 
summit is ever serene and pure: this was his 
opinion, in print, though his talk and his 
manuscripts were not so complimentary. It 
is not the conclusion forced upon impartial 
students of the Papacy, from the tenth century 
to the eighteenth. With regard to the existing 
Papacy, Manning’s ‘‘ Life” scarcely demon- 
strates to us that the atmosphere of the Vatican 
is pure and peaceful; that it is free from guile 
and plotting; that the papal Curia is governed 
by the maxims and methods of the New Testa- 
ment. If the Pope be really the Head of such 
an organization as Manning describes, then he 
and his system should be rejected and con- 
demned together by all those who value Chris- 
tianity. If the Pope be merely a Figurehead, 
he is very much to be commiserated, and is 
not worth considering. He cannot, on either 
supposition, be helpful to the higher and more 
permanent interests of Christianity. 

Papalism, surely, is but an episode, in the 
long development of our Christian progress. It 
is not a permanent or a necessary factor. The 
Christianity of the future appears likely to be 
more social than political or theological; and, if 
so, all the existing schemes of Church organiza- 
tion will be altered, or may even disappear. 
There will be no place in them for any claimant 
to theological infallibility and autocratic power. 
All such claims will be destroyed by the his- 
torical spirit, by scientific methods of life and 
thought, by the fuller establishment of intelli- 
gence, of equality, of liberty, of practical and 
primitive Christianity. 

However these things may be, we can be sure 


152 England and the Papacy. 


that the papal Curia, as it exists at present, and 
the whole Anglo-Saxon world will find them- 
selves to be as incompatible with one another 
as England and Rome have shown themselves 
through all the heroic and tortuous conflicts 
between them in the past. ‘‘ England,” as Mr. 
Taunton says in his admirable book on Wolsey, 
‘‘has always been a puzzle to Rome:” and, ever 
since the eleventh century, Rome has been a 
scandal, a hindrance, and a danger to the 
English People. 

Our attitude towards the Papacy has been de- 
cided for us by a long course of events, of which 
this volume has been designed to summarize 
the history. The past cannot be unmade; and 
our English attitude towards the Roman Court 
is not likely to be altered in the future. Our 
Anglo-Celtic brethren, in Australasia and in the 
United States, will probably find more and more, 
as our forefathers did, that the domination of 
Rome is a cause of perpetual friction, and a 
hindrance to their progress in civil and intel- 
lectual freedom. If we may judge by the past, 
it is inconceivable that these democratic and 
intensely national members of the Ceitic family, 
living, as they are compelled, in the full tide of 
human progress, enjoying all and more than all 
that our predecessors gained for us, will allow 
their ecclesiastical affairs to be manipulated for 
ever by the scheming officials and nominees 
of a retrograde Italian Oligarchy. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE PRESENT POSITION OF ROMAN CATHOLICS 
IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 


HE future of the Papacy lies, as the 
Odyssey has it, ‘‘on the knees of the 
gods.” The tendency of mankind to be deceived 
appears to be illimitable; but the whole ten- 
dency of the future appears, also, to be slowly, 
though surely, setting away from the Papacy, 
as we have known it in the past, and see it in 
the present. The New Learning was quenched, 
to a very large extent, within the papal organi- 
zation, during the sixteenth century. The 
medizval theology was re-established and even 
strengthened by the Council of Trent. Histori- 
cal and theological documents were tampered 
with, in the interests of the ecclesiastical authori- 
ties. By these means, the papal claims were 
reasserted, and the question of their true origin 
and foundation was deferred. This question, 
however, is now before the world again; and the 
answer cannot be evaded as it was in the past. 
Our historical spirit, our scientific temperament, 
our critical and rigorous methods of enquiry, 
our knowledge about the growth of institutions, 
our discoveries about the evolution and the com- 
parative history of religions, must all tell in the 
end upon Christianity. The gold in it will be 
separated from the dross. It will emerge from the 


154 England and the Papacy. 


crucible stronger and purer than before ; but the 
traditional Papacy, that medizval, feudal, semi- 
pagan, wholly mundane organization, mani- 
pulated at present by the Jesuits, with its claims 
to universal domination and theological infalli- 
bility, must assuredly be purged away. If the 
Founder of Christianity had provided the world 
with an infallible guide in faith and morals, it is 
incredible that that guide should have the record, 
and should produce those results, which the 
Papacy has invariably shown. These records 
and results condemn the Papacy, and are a 
sufficient refutation of the papal claims and 
theories. We may wait with confidence for the 
inevitable verdict of the future. 

Meanwhile, it is the duty of Englishmen to 
remember the origin of this institution, its 
nature and its methods in the past, as well as 
the history of its relations to our country, and 
its invariable policy towards our forefathers : 
remembering, too, that the principles of the 
Roman Curia are unchanged, that its organiza- 
tion is more centralized and dangerous than ever, 
that its true policy and aims are rather dis- 
sembled than reformed. It is still, and always 
must be, the uncompromising foe of our nature 
and institutions. 

But it is our duty, also, and a much pleasanter 
one, to distinguish in the present, as well as in 
the past, between the rulers of the Vatican and 
the great body of English Roman Catholics. 
Our fellow subjects, who are Roman Catholics, 
are on the whole distinguished, as their fore- 
fathers were, for devotion to their country. In 
these days, that devotion is thoroughly well 
earned ; because the Romanists are not so free 
under any other government as they are through- 


England and the Papacy. 155 


out the British Empire. Our complete justice 
and toleration do not secure the gratitude of the 
papal authority, because they are contrary to 
the principles and spirit of the Curia; but they 
have secured the loyalty and attachment of the 
English Romanists. The memories of ancient 
hostility are dying out among them. The 
privileges they enjoy, the atmosphere in which 
they live, their fuller mingling with the large 
world of English life and thought, have made the 
present generation of English Roman Catholics 
very different from their immediate predecessors. 
In proportion to their numbers, they rank high 
for distinguished and useful service to the State. 
As they have thus broken down the old barriers 
which once existed between themselves and their 
fellow-countrymen, so we, in our turn, should 
break down any barriers of theological or social 
prejudice which may still remain between our- 
selves and them. That is the most certain way 
to minimise the influence of the Vatican. 

There are many questions, no doubt, in which 
the great majority of Englishmen cannot agree 
with the Romanists theologically; but the num- 
ber of questions in which we can agree with 
them and work with them, socially, politically, 
philanthropically, are continually increasing. 

There are many questions, too, in which we 
have much to learn from the English Romanists. 
Their organization, their loyalty to their leaders, 
their efforts and sacrifices in the cause of charity 
and education, are deserving of the highest 
praise, and may put most other religious bodies 
to shame. The Jews and the Quakers alone, 
perhaps, surpass the Romanists in the extent of 
their charity, and in the personal care bestowed 
upon the recipients of it. 


156 England and the Papacy. 


The education of the Roman clergy in Eng- 
land leaves very much to be desired, both as 
to the nature and standards of their learning, 
and their attitude towards the State as citizens. 
But, as in other countries, so also in England, 
the seminaries cannot be cut off wholly from 
modern thought. Modern theories, modern 
methods, the historical and scientific spirit, are 
all touching the papal theology, as well as the 
opinions of every other Church. Whatever else 
may be the result of this process, it must dissolve 
and undermine the foundations of the papal 
monarchy. History and the Papacy are incom- 
patibles. The scientific spirit and clericalism 
cannot subsist together. English principles of 
liberty and autocratic methods of Church govern- 
ment cannot be combined; and the future 
appears, on the whole, more likely to favour 
our principles than those of the Papacy. In the 
past, victory has certainly been with the English 
People, and against their ancient foe. We 
gained our civil, intellectual and religious liberty 
in spite of him. The future also will be with 
the English People, as against the forces repre- 
sented by the Vatican, so long as we are true to 
ourselves and to the traditions of our heroic 
past. This is the experience and the legacy 
which we must hand on to our descendants 
here, and to the larger communities of our 
kinsmen beyond the seas. 


Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row,.London, E.C. 


Imperial Drofestant Federation. 


CONSTITUTION. 
OBJECTS. 


I. To federate Evangelical Protestant Churches and Societies 
within the British Empire, for the purpose of facilitating fraternal 
intercourse and co-operation between them. 

2. To strengthen the federated organizations, and to defend 
their rights. 

3. To promote the formation of branches of the federated 
organizations, and to unite such branches in District Federations. 

4. To ascertain the opinions and desires of the federated 
organizations, and to determine how best to carry them out. 

5. To render financial aid to any federated organization 
which is in urgent need of funds. 

6. To publish tracts, books, and newspapers; and to make 
free grants of literature to the federated organisations. 

7- To oppose all attempts to :— 

(a) Alter the Coronation Oath and the Declaration against 
Transubstantiation. 

(4) Open the Throne of England to a Romanist. 

(c) Repeal the Bill of Rights or the Act of Settlement. 

(a) Throw open the offices of Lord High Chancellor of 
England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to Roman 
Catholics. 

(e) Grant State aid of any description for the furtherance of 
Romish or Ritualistic objects. 

) Give any increased powers—political or otherwise—to 
the Church of Rome. 

(g) Open diplomatic relations with the Vatican. 

8. To labour for the :— 

(az) Suppression of Romanism in the Church of England. 

(4) Exclusion of the Jesuit Order from the British Empire. 

(c) Periodical inspection by Government officials of all con- 
vents and monastic institutions, and the liberation of 
such of their inmates as are forcibly detained therein. 

(Zz) Return of Protestant members to the British House of 
Commons and the Colonial Legislatures, to County 
Councils, Vestries, Boards of Guardians and School 
Boards. 

g. To take any action required for the protection or advance- 
ment of Protestant interests, provided such action is sanctioned by 
the Imperial Council. 


LIMITATIONS. 

10. The Federation shall not act independently as a separate 
society. 

11. It shall not seek to represent individual opinion. 

12. Donors and subscribers shall not be represented upon the 
Imperial Council; and they shall not participate in the manage- 
ment of the Federation. 

13. No attempt shall be made to destroy, injure, or weaken 
the individuality of the federated organizations. 

14. The federated organizations shall not be required to 
guarantee the income of the Federation. 


BASIS. 
15. The Federation shall be composed only of those organiza- 
tions which :— 

(a) Accept the Bible as the Word of God, and as the one, 
only, and all-sufficient Rule of Faith. 

(2) Accept the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three 
Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—in the one 
Godhead. 

(c) Accept the doctrine of the Incarnation, that God the Son 
took upon Him the nature of man, so that He is per- 
fect God and perfect man. 

(2) Accept the doctrine of justification by faith only, through 
the merit and sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
Christ; and not for our own works or deservings. 

(e) Believe that the offering of Christ, once-for-a!l offered 
upon the Cross, was a full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for sin; and can 
never be continued, repeated, nor re-presented. 

(7) Believe that regeneration, or the new birth, is the work 
of God the Holy Ghost, and not dependent on any 
ordinance or human agency. 


IMPERIAL COUNCIL. 

16. The Imperial Council shall consist of two representatives 
annually appointed by each independent federated organization, 
one representative annually appointed by each District Federa- 
tion, and one representative annually appointed by each Colonial 
Federation. ; 

17. The Imperial Council shall have power to give increased 
representation to any organization which, in its opinion, is entitled 
to a greater influence in the management of the Hed 
vided always that the total number of representatives appointed by 
any organization shall not exceed four, and that any proposal to 
. give increased representation to an organization shall be approved 
by at least two-thirds of the members present at the meeting of the 
Imperial Council at which it is brought forward. 

18. The Imperial Council shall meet not less than once a 
month, excepting during the months of August and September. 

19. It shall be responsible for maintaining the Federation in 
working order; shall carry out its objects; and shall exercise 
supreme control over its affairs. 


20. It may be specially convened at any time :— 
(z) By the Chairman of the Imperial Council. 
(4) On the requisition in writing of not less than three of the 
federated organizations. 

21. The non-representative members (not exceeding twenty) 
elected before the adoption of this Constitution shall retain their 
seats upon the Imperial Council ; but no similar appointments shall 
be made in the future, and as vacancies occur they shall not be 
filled. 


COMMITTEES. 

22. The Imperial Council may appoint Committees when 
necessary, and may entrust to them such duties and powers as it 
considers advisable. 


CHAIRMAN. 
23. The Chairman of the Imperial Council shall be appointed 
by the Imperial Council. 


DISTRICT FEDERATIONS. 

24. District Federations may be formed in the Metropolis, 
and in cities, towns, and Parliamentary divisions; and they shall 
consist of independent Protestant societies, branches of societies, 
and congregations. 

25. The Committee of each District Federation shall consist 
of two representatives annually appointed by each federated 
organization. 

26. Each District Federation shall annually appoint one 
representative to attend the meetings of the Imperial Council. 

27. The District Federations shall adhere to the Constitution 
of the Imperial Protestant Federation, and they shall locally carry 
out its objects. 


COLONIAL FEDERATIONS. 

28. Efforts shall be made to form in each British Colony 
a Federation of Evangelical Protestant Churches and Societies. 

29. The Grand Council of each Colonial Federation shall con- 
sist of two representatives annually appointed by each independent 
federated organization, and one representative annually appointed 
by each District Federation. 

30. Each Colonial Federation shall, if possible, annually 
appoint a representative to attend the meetings of the Imperial 
Council ; and it shall appoint a Corresponding Secretary, who shall 
keep in constant communication with the London office. 

31. The Colonial Federations shall adhere to the Constitution 
of the Imperial Protestant Federation, and they shall locally carry 
out its objects. 

32. The Colonial Federations shall promote the formation of 
District Federations within their spheres of influence. 


PRESIDENT. 
33- The Imperial Council shall annually appoint a President, 
who shall subscribe not less than ten guineas per annum. 


3 The post oF tesa 

held by the President, provided he is appo 
thirds of the members present at a meeting o 
Council. 


VICE-PRESIDENTS. 

The Imperial Council may appoint Vice: Peesaaaet 

shall each subscribe not less than three guineas per annum; a 

may also appoint Hon. Vice-Presidents. 

36. The Vice-Presidents shall not participate in the ma 
ment of the Federation. f 


FINANCE. 

37. Each federated organization represented upon the inte Hi 
Council shall subscribe not less than one guinea per annum. as 

38. The Imperial Council shall have power, when necessary, 
to give representation 10 organizations without payment of = 
annual subscription. : 

39 Each society, branch of a society, and congregation, sh: - “ 
subscribe not less than five shillings per annum to the Distr 
Federation upon which it is represented. 

40. The Committees of the District Federations shall 
power, when necessary, to give representation to societies, bran 
of societies, and congregations, without payment of an ann 
subscription. ae 

41. Each federated Colonial organization ial subscribe ne 
less than one guinea (or its equivalent in Colonial coinage) 
annum to the Federation upon which it is represented. 

42. Colonial Federations shall have power, when necessary, 
give representation to organizations without payment of an annu : 
subscription. oa; 


CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS. 

43. Any amendment of this Constitution must be made ei 
on the motion of the Imperial Council, or on the motion of one ¢ of 
the federated organizations. 

44. Notice of any Constitutional amendment by a fede F 
organization must be given to the Secretary of the Federation 
least thirty days before the meeting of the Imperial Council. 

45. All proposed Constitutional amendments must be sent 
each federated organization at least fourteen days before the m 
ing of the Imperial Council. 

46. Constitutional amendments shall not be adopted un 
they are approved by at least two-thirds of the members present 
the meeting of the Imperial Council at which they are brot 
forward. 


eee 


The Imperial Protestant Federation has the warm symp 
and active co-operation of over 200 Protestant Organizations 
its Council is composed of representatives officially appointed 
35 United Protestant Societies. : 


3, PALMER STREET, QUEEN ANNE’s GATE, LONDON, S.V 


Orn - 


Now Ready, in large 8vo, bound, price 1/6. 


Baptism and Regeneration 


WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN 
THEM ? 


BY 


WERNER H. K. SOAMES, M.A. 


Vicar of St. George's, Greenwich. 


In the existence of so many antagonistic views upon the two Sacra- 
ments, the author sees a proof that, in all probability, all the common 
theories respecting them contain certain elements of error. In total 
disregard therefore, of all existing views, his object has been, by a’fresh, 
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erroneous theories by sound and true ones. 


He is disposed to think that his conclusions may not be accepted 
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He then draws out carefully and at length, the teaching of the 
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the many-century-ago exploded errors of Sacerdotalism, for those who 
really care for the 1ruth of God in Revelation respecting the Sacraments, 
to strive after a’more clear perception and grasp of it than has hitherto 
prevailed. P 


ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. 


a la D isdlibae oie a AL ie a aa uaa iE 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 


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What does the Church of England say pee 
the Real Presence and Adoration ? 


A REPLY TO PART OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY’S 
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ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. ace 


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Works by the Rev. N. Dimock, AM. 


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———— = ~ es 


The Sacerdotium of Christ, considered 
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Our One Priest on High. 


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An Examination of the Teaching of our Article XXXT. 


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ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E,C 


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